ELI and Johnny Harris on Flying Money: How Criminals Move Trillions Without a Trace

Earth League International Collaborates with Emmy-Winning Independent Filmmaker Johnny Harris to Expose “Flying Money” — The Shadow Financial System Fueling Global Crime

As part of ELI’s commitment to not only investigating but also raising global awareness of the most dangerous and poorly understood dimensions of transnational organized crime, we collaborated with filmmaker and journalist Johnny Harris to bring Flying Money — the invisible financial engine behind global trafficking — to the attention of millions.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAFw5i39m9I

Earth League International (ELI) collaborated with Emmy-winning filmmaker and journalist Johnny Harris on a new investigative video, “How Money Laundering Actually Works” shedding light on one of the most consequential and least understood threats in transnational organized crime: Flying Money.

Known in Chinese as feiqian, Flying Money is an ancient, trust-based underground financial system that allows criminal organizations to move vast sums across borders without leaving a trace in the formal banking system. Originally developed during China’s Tang Dynasty over 1,200 years ago, feiqian has evolved into a sophisticated instrument exploited by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) to launder profits from wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, drug trafficking, illegal mining, and other serious crimes — all beyond the reach of regulators and law enforcement.

Flying Money is not a marginal phenomenon: it is a central financial mechanism enabling the criminal exploitation of nature on a global scale.

“Flying Money is one of the most dangerous and underestimated financial threats in the world today,” said Andrea Crosta, Founder and Executive Director of ELI. “It connects wildlife trafficking to drug cartels, illegal mining to money laundering, and environmental destruction to national security. Yet most people — and most policymakers — have never heard of it. This collaboration with Johnny Harris is an opportunity to change that.”

Harris, whose YouTube channel reaches over 7.5 million subscribers worldwide, is known for his visually driven, deeply researched storytelling on complex global issues. His involvement brings ELI’s frontline intelligence to an audience far beyond the traditional policy and conservation communities — reaching millions of viewers who may encounter the realities of transnational environmental crime for the first time.