Vietnam Army a Key Player In Illicit Laos Timber Trade, Report Says

A new report says that the Vietnamese military is playing a central role in a multi-billion dollar operation to smuggle illegally cleared timber from neighboring Laos. During a two-year investigation, agents from the
EIA
UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), posing as timber buyers, found that a ban on the export of raw timber from Laos is regularly flouted, with an estimated 500,000 cubic meters of logs being funneled to Vietnamese furniture factories each year. That trade is fueling Vietnam’s surging wood processing industry but poses a threat to millions of rural and indigenous people who depend upon those dwindling forests, the report says. And according to the report, Crossroads: The Illicit Timber Trade Between Laos and Vietnam, one of the biggest loggers in Laos is the Vietnamese Company of Economic Cooperation, which is owned by the Vietnamese military. “EIA first exposed the illicit log trade between Laos and Vietnam in 2008, and our latest investigations reveal that sadly nothing has changed,” said Faith Doherty, head of EIA’s Forest Campaign. Much of the illegal timber, the EIA report says, ultimately ends up in stores in the U.S. and Europe.