How Five Ancient Baobabs Nearly Left South Africa for a Billionaire’s Park

Georgia. I thought, wow, is this more than a coincidence? And the further coincidence was the fact that the trees from Kenya, there'd been a big row about it. Eventually, Kenya changed its position and granted permits for these trees to be exported to Georgia. And the place they went to is a 60-hectare botanical, private botanical park owned by the former Prime Minister of Georgia, Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Even in Georgia, this park has attracted a lot of attention and controversy because, in fact, there was a documentary made about it. Mr. Ivan Ishvili established this park on the Black Sea at a place called Shetvitili Generalogical Park. And he had uprooted and transported massive, massive trees from Georgia. And they were sailed across the Black Sea in barges upright with a

A very large bucket of the sand and the roots in place to protect them. When they were transported over land, because of their height and their width, they had to knock down telephone poles and divert traffic. And I think there was also a sense of loss from some Georgian citizens about trees being taken from where they'd been for hundreds of years and replanted in this kind of billionaire's private post.

Coincidence isn't proof. And so I had to try to contact both the exporter, presumably, he knows who his client is and who's paying, but we didn't receive any answers from him. And that's a company called Divine Landscapes. And so the next step was really to try and contact people in Georgia directly. So my first port of call was the Georgian embassy in Pretoria. I made contact with

Them, sent them some questions. As I said, the former prime minister, he, in fact, he's considered to be still the de facto ruler of Georgia through the in the background. So he's very well connected. And I also made inquiries with, well, tried to contact parliamentarians in the Georgian parliament. And we also traced the number of Mr. Ivanishvili's lawyer and sent questions to him. And unfortunately, there

There was a rather deafening silence. And so we can't say for certain that's where they were going. But I think the evidence that there is at the moment really points very strongly to the fact that they were going to really replace these canyon trees, which had just withered and died in Georgia. And we found photographs of those dead trees in his park as well. I mean, I'm sure you ruffled a lot of feathers asking questions, Tony, about the de facto leader and making connections.