Burgess COMMENTARY
As a practical matter, the law really does not matter when there is a lot of money to be made. The life cycle analysis of lumber has a lot of murky transactions, and as the lumber moves on through the supply chain what has happened in the past becomes more and more difficult to discern ... and as long as the actors are making money, there is very little incentive to dig deep into anythng. In the end, it is the individual customer at the end of the supply chain that is going to determine whether or not a product sells, and until this customer is well informed about the life cycle of everything they buy, there is not going to be much change in corporate behavior ... which is a dreadful conclusion
Peter Burgess

Global firms accused of importing timber linked to Amazon massacre Greenpeace alleges 12 companies continued to trade with Madeireira Cedroarana after its founder was accused of ordering torture and murder


Illegal logging seized in Brazil.

A US Act bans trade in timber that violates any foreign law. Photograph: Jose Caldas/Brazil Photos/Getty Images

More than a dozen US and European companies have been importing timber from a Brazilian logging firm whose owner is implicated in one of the most brutal Amazonian massacres in recent memory, according to a Greenpeace Brazil investigation.

The first-world buyers allegedly continued trading with Madeireira Cedroarana after police accused its founder, Valdelir João de Souza, of ordering the torture and murder of nine people in Colniza, Mato Grosso, on 19 April, claims the report by the NGO.

The state attorney alleges de Souza organised the assassinations to gain access to the forest where the victims – all smallholders – lived. Since the indictment on 15 May, the suspect has been on the run.

During this period, the fugitive’s company allegedly sold products to foreign firms who shipped them to the US, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan.

Greenpeace alleges these shipments may be in contravention of the US Lacey Act, which bans trade in timber that violates any foreign law, and the European Union’s timber regulation, which obliges companies to conduct due diligence to ensure there is “no more than a negligible risk that it has been illegally harvested.”

It lists the 13 companies involved as Pine Products, Lacey Wood Products, Mid-State Lumber Corp, South Florida Lumber, Wood Brokerage International, Vogel Import & Export, Delfin Germany, Tiger Deck, Global Timber, Centre Import Bois Méditerranée, Derlage Junior Hout, Global Gold Forest and Houthandel van der Hoek.


Greenpeace activists set up crosses in Brasília in memory of people killed during conflicts in the Amazon. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Even before this year’s massacre, the report alleges these firms should have hesitated to do business with Madeireira Cedroarana because it had accrued about £130,000 in unpaid federal fines for stocking and trading illegal timber. There also appears to be evidence of widespread fraud, timber laundering and killings of forest defenders in Amazon states including Mato Grosso.

Greenpeace urged US and European authorities to consider Brazilian timber to be at high risk of coming from an illegal source, and thus to oblige companies to go beyond official paperwork and to carry out third-party field audits.