Well,

I've been looking into this, and I'm ashamed to say that I was suprised to discover that Mozambican Elephants are listed as CITES I and not CITES II as most of Southern Africa are.

It seems that Mozambique did not apply for the downgrade when RSA, ZIM etc did so. The good news is that if the Moz outfitter did/does his job correctly then he will have applied for and been granted a CITES I Elephant export licence......if he has that then I'm told the US F&WS will have no problem issuing an import licence for it. However if the outfitter applied for a CITES II licence or no licence at all then it will probably be impossible to pursuade the US F&WS to co-operate.

Hope you're buddy manages to get it sorted out.