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A key element in illegal logging schemes is the laundering of the illegal timber and
other wood products. This is the primary way that illegal logs are transported, pro-
cessed and exported or manufactured, thereby bypassing the majority of certification
schemes and efforts to avoid illegal imports.
LAUNDERING ILLEGAL LOGS
AND WOOD PRODUCTS
The laundering of timber or wood products is also where
government certification schemes or international
agreements are often inadequate. Schemes such as the
EU FLEGT Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs)
are important mechanisms for establishing joint inten-
tions and collaboration to prevent imports of illegal tim-
ber. However, they are not primarily law enforcement
initiatives to combat illegal logging or transnational
crime and corruption, and face many challenges regard-
ing the actual crime.
One of the greatest challenges in combating illegal log-
ging is understanding how illegally logged, procured,
processed or manufactured wood products are laun-
dered and spread to markets in the US, the EU, China
and Japan, which together receive over 80 per cent of
the world’s illegally logged wood. One common launder-
ing scheme is to mix illegally logged logs with legal logs
during the forestry operation, at a storage facility for
transport, in processing mills, or through resale along
with legal cuts. Another increasingly common method
is to filter illegal logs through real or “artificial” planta-
tions (existing only on paper) – thus selling illegal logs
as products of the plantations.