Cambodian, VN officials accused of taking huge bribes to allow clearing

Logging a ‘conspiracy’: EIA

CAMBODIAN andVietnamese officials have received millions of dollars in bribes from Vietnamese timber traders as part of a cross-border “conspiracy” to log vast swathes of Ratanakkiri province and fun- nel the timber to Vietnam, according a to damning report by the Environmental Investigation Agency released today.

The report, titled Repeat Offender: Vietnam’s Persistent Trade in Illegal Timber, reveals further details of a systematic large-scale logging operation permitted and supported by authorities in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province to strip more than 300,000 cubic metres of commercial timber from protected forests in the Kingdom’s east, an operation first reported by The Post last week.

Through interviews with timber traders, official documents and field work in Cambodia and Vietnam, EIA details how the large-scale timber harvest was arranged in Vietnam and carried out in Ratanakkiri’s Virachey and O’Yadav national parks, and Lumphat and Srepok wildlife sanctuaries.

At a rate of 100 trucks a day during December and January, timber was smuggled across unofficial border crossings to seven major lumberyards near Vietnam’s official border gate with Cambodia’s O’Yadav district. The wood was then “legitimised”, with Vietnamese authorities marking, registering and taxing the illegally CONTINUED

EIA Logs are smuggled into Vietnam via a clandestine crossing in O’Tabok, in the Virachey National Park, in February.

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