Govt officials and loggers cut deals to ‘rape’ Sabah forests

KOTA KINABALU: Task force investigators are beginning to uncover an unholy alliance between government officials and loggers cutting deals to “rape” Sabah’s forests.

It came to light when recent raids conducted uncovered a series of illegal logging activities as well as forest offences committed by certain government-linked and public-listed companies.

According to sources, there was a complex network of loggers working with state officials, who turned a blind eye to illegal logging operations carried out by licensed timber concession holders, as well as illegal operators.

“There has been a lot of hanky-panky going on for years. Kickbacks run into tens of millions,” said a source who was aware of the ongoing probe.

The source said the state lost a lot of revenue as some of the loggers did not pay royalty to the state or premium to Yayasan Sabah, the state’s largest timber concession holder.

Apart from illegal logging itself, some licensed timber concession holders were also known to have encroached into forest reserves – and there were no checks from the forestry authority.

The state government allows 60cm in diameter trees for felling but trees as small as 40cm were also allowed to be felled in recent years.

Tree felling was allowed within the Forest Management Units (FMUs) in the name of industrial tree planting. The sources said carrying out tree felling in FMUs defeated the purpose of forest management.

The source said that the investigators were looking into this closely.

Between July 5 and 17, a special task force against illegal logging seized a total of 40,161 logs at several forest reserves in Sabah.

Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal ordered the investigators to lodge reports with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and police to probe further into any wrongdoing on the part of loggers and officials in the areas.

The task force was ordered to carry out the probe with the police and the MACC, while the seized timber would be used as evidence for legal action.