How the Russian forest is stolen

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The international nongovernmental organization with the resounding name "Environmental Investigation Agency" (EIA) has published a sensational report "Eliminating Forests: Parquet, Organized Crime and the World's Last Siberian Tigers."

For two years, the agency has been investigating deforestation in the Far East. The organization's specialists, disguised as wood buyers, traveled to Russia and China, visited sawmills and warehouses in Khabarovsk and in the border cities of the Middle Kingdom and interviewed Russian officials.

As a result, they were able to uncover the scheme of "legalization" of illegally obtained timber and estimate the losses of Russia from timber smuggling. The numbers terrified researchers. It turned out that 50% to 80% of exported hardwood trees are cut down illegally every year.

Russian forest at the service of Chinese progress

Over the past 20 years, businessmen from the Middle Kingdom have taken leading positions in the Russian timber processing sector. After 2007, this process accelerated. Then the Russian government raised export duties on round timber. Officials hoped the measure would increase domestic timber processing.

And so it happened. True, the vast majority of the newly created sawmills belonged to entrepreneurs from China. At the same time, Chinese migrants very often worked at timber processing enterprises.

When the government became aware of the situation and laid down harsh rules for foreign owners, the companies were rewritten to dummies from Russia with ties to local officials. Now businessmen own the right to cut hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest in the Far East. But they get their main income from deforestation outside the official quotas.

Illegal deforestation in the Far East is a well-organized business in which a huge number of people are involved - from local residents to top managers of major Western companies.

Brigade of chinese lumberjacks

Lumberjack brigades on tractors are carrying their booty to a sawmill in a nearby village. The owner of the sawmill prints the documents for the forest (sometimes they are simply downloaded from the Internet) and goes to certify them with local officials. The cost of this illegal "service" is from $ 3 to $ 6 per cubic meter of timber.

The timber is then sold to Chinese suppliers. Companies from China know that it is illegal to buy timber from black loggers from Russia, so they ship it to China under the guise of forest cut down in accordance with quotas.

Most of the Russian oaks enter the Celestial Empire through the small town of Suifenhe, located on the border with the Primorsky Territory. From there, the timber is transported by rail to markets throughout the country. On the way, they are mixed with legally cut timber.

Expensive types of wood - oak, ash, elm and linden - are used for the production of furniture and parquet for both the local market and for export.

The main player in this market is Xingjia, a company from northeastern China. She owns three wood processing factories in her homeland and at least 14 more factories in the Far East region of Russia. The off-label president of Xingjia told EIA investigators that ties with relatives of Russian officials were a key factor in the company's success in the market.

According to him, the son of the Deputy Governor of the Khabarovsk Territory and the brother of the Prosecutor General of the Far East region are involved in the illegal timber export business. Some Chinese officials are also involved.

This "roof" allows Xingjia to cut much more forest than the official quotas allow, and to buy wood from "black lumberjacks" with impunity.

Analysis of export documents showed that the largest buyer of Xingjia is the American company Lumber Liquidators. It is the largest retailer of hardwood floors in North America with over 300 retail stores. Every month the company receives 10 - 20 containers with parquet from China. Then floors made of Russian wood end up in the homes of unsuspecting Americans.

The price of the issue

• In 2012, a little more than 30 million cubic meters of timber were exported from Russia to China. Another 24 million cubic meters, according to experts, were exported from the country illegally.
• Timber imported from Russia makes up 20% of timber imports to China.
• The Celestial Empire makes a lot of money on the export of timber. In 2012, the country sold overseas timber, finished furniture and parquet for $ 20 billion.
• The largest sales market was the United States (33% of exports), the EU accounted for 17% of exports, another 7% - to Japan. But the Far Eastern forest practically never returns to Russia.
• It is extremely difficult to accurately assess the scale of losses. We can only talk about the approximate amount of damage.

According to the Russian authorities, due to illegal deforestation in the Far East in 2010 alone, the budget lost 4 billion rubles. But EIA experts argue that official statistics take into account no more than 5% of real losses.

It is even more difficult to assess environmental losses. The Far Eastern forests are home to rare and even endangered animals. It is on this territory that the Amur tigers, included in the Red Book, live. The Russian government will not be able to defeat the "forest mafia" alone, the EIA experts state.

Therefore, they offer the largest buyer of Russian timber - China - to create a transparent system in which it would be possible to trace the origin of timber. In addition, large fines should be imposed in the United States and the European Union for companies that use illegally mined timber from Russia.