When German boat builders finally complete Sailing Yacht ‘A’, the world’s largest ever, it will sail away with decks crafted from illegitimate teak sourced from Myanmar. At nearly 150m long and 100m tall, the yacht is being built in Nobiskrug shipyard for Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko at a cost of £260 million
Based on extensive undercover investigations into trade in China and Myanmar, this report exposes key actors and systemic corruption which facilitate trade in stolen timber. In Myanmar, Chinese businesses pay in gold bars for the rights to log entire mountains, corruption allows the timber to pass through checkpoints
A briefing for the 11th ASEAN Experts Group on CITES (CITES AEG) and 10th meeting of the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) in Brunei from 5-8 May 2015. Details how illegal logging and trade in rosewoods to supply Asia’s booming Hongmu furniture markets is driving a violent wave of crime across the Mekong
Myanmar’s precious rosewood trees face commercial extinction at the hands of China’s multi-billion dollar ‘hongmu’ reproduction furniture boom. If current trends persist unaddressed, the two most targeted hongmu species in Myanmar could be logged to commercial extinction within as little as three years
Precious Siamese rosewood has been illegally logged to the brink of extinction in the Mekong region to feed a voracious demand for luxury furniture in China which leaves a bloody trail of death, violence and corruption in its wake. This report exposes a multi-billion dollar industry fuelled by high level corruption
China the world’s second biggest economy, is effectively standing on the sidelines as its growth devastates forests in a trade worth billions of dollars a year. This report reveals that China is now the single largest international consumer of illegal timber, importing wood stolen by organised criminal syndicates