“Everyone does it.” That’s how the representative of a sawmill described the practice of selling fake documents to illegal timber from the Brazilian Amazon as legitimate, a fraud known as timber laundering. The testimony was collected by a team from theEnvironmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a U.K.-based organization that fights environmental crime, during investigations into Brazil’s illegal logging practices. 

With support from the Netherlands-based Center for Climate Crime Analysis (CCCA), they found that 53,000 cubic meters (1.87 million cubic feet) of timber with signs of illegality were declared from five properties in Pará state between 2021 and 2024, an amount enough to fill 1,828 shipping containers. Of these, 1,521 m³ (53,714 ft³), or nearly 3%, were imported by U.S. and European companies.

“The findings suggest a pervasive culture where corrupt deals and the manipulation of legal frameworks are widespread,” EIA concluded in its report,published in March. “The open boasting and normalization of these alleged illegal activities paint a troubling picture of a sector that disregards both the law and sustainable forestry practices,” it added.

The wood tracked by EIA was supposedly extracted from five legal areas with sustainable forest management plans, which should follow strict environmental rules to minimize impacts on the rainforest. But when CCCA experts looked at satellite images of the harvest areas, they found no signs of logging, even though their owners had declared in Pará’s timber credit system that they had moved a large amount of wood from those areas.

These credits, also known as forest origin documents (DOFs), are paperwork that has to be filled out every time a load of wood is moved from one place to another, including the route from the logging site to the sawmill. Once a logging site’s forest management plan is approved by environmental authorities, its owner can issue a certain number of DOFs, corresponding to the volume of trees they’re allowed to extract from that area. Since there’s no way to sell wood without a DOF,illegal loggers buy these credits from underexploited logging sites to cover their illegal products. 

“Let’s say that a logger has a 1,000-hectare authorized forest management area, and when we look at the satellite images, there is no sign of logging, but he has still moved the credit. That’s an indication of timber laundering,” Camila Damasceno, from the Amazon research institute Imazon, told Mongabay. “This wood is possibly coming from an illegal place, such as a conservation unit or Indigenous land, and not from the authorized area.”

EIA and CCCA experts also found other irregularities, such as wood being sold from areas embargoed by the federal environmental agency, IBAMA, and from an area with an illegal gold mine. “Unfortunately, we can say that this is a widespread problem, which is not restricted to the cases we have uncovered,” Chris Moye, EIA’s lead campaigner, told Mongabay.

Despite blatant irregularities, this wood moved freely along the supply chain, passing through 19 sawmills and 16 Brazilian exporters until eventually reaching 30 U.S. and European buyers. 

Among the species most coveted for export are ipê (Tabebuia serratifolia) and cumaru (Dipteryx odorata), recently added to the CITES, the international wildlife trade convention, which foresees stricter rules for the commerce of timber from endangered species. 

An ipê tree takes between 80 and 100 years to reach maturity, but this specieshas almost disappeared from the Amazon thanks to illegal logging. Behind this destruction is a large profit margin that increases along the supply chain. According to data collected by EIA, the price per cubic meter of raw ipê ranges from 800-900 reais ($135 to $150) when it leaves the Pará logging sites. Once converted into sawn timber, the price goes up to around 4,000 reais ($680). After processing and ready for export, it can fetch up to 17,000 reais (about $2,900) per cubic meter. 

“It gives you some idea of the profits that can be gained by producing value-added products along the supply chain and for export,” Moye said.

The U.S. and the European Union have specific laws to prevent the import of illegal timber. The EU Timber Regulation, for example, demands importers check satellite images of the logging areas and verify whether their suppliers have been fined by environmental authorities in the countries of origin. Yet this hasn’t prevented EU-based companies from buying timber from 14 Brazilian exporters with a history of environmental offenses.

“Some of these importers claim to do all sorts of very detailed scrutinies of their supply chains, including third-party checks and certifications,” Moye said. “However, it was very [evident] that kind of due diligence fell short.”

Requirements for timber imports from the EU will become even more stringent from December 2025, when the EU regulation on deforestation-free products, or EUDR, will come into force. The rule, which also applies to soy, cattle, rubber, palm oil, coffee and cocoa, requires that traders put in place transparent tracking systems to prove their products don’t come from areas deforested after Dec. 31, 2020.

No punishment or traceability

Brazil is the world’s fourth-largest timber producer, and several studies have shown that sourcing hardwood from the Amazon is a high-risk deal. According to the last report from Simex, a civil society initiative that tracks illegal logging in the rainforest,35% of the area exploited for wood between August 2022 and July 2023 was illegal. In the state of Pará, Brazil’s leading native timber producer, 42% of the harvest area was illegally logged. 

“Illegal loggers don’t use sustainable management techniques, which allow timber to be harvested in a way that doesn’t harm the surrounding trees or the forest canopy,” said Damasceno from Imazon, which created Simex in 2008. 

The environmental damage doesn’t end once loggers are gone, since logging has historically paved the way for other exploitative activities. “Loggers are the initial vectors,” Vinicius Otavio Benoit Costa, an analyst with IBAMA, told Mongabay. “Once the timber with the highest commercial value has been removed, the rest of the forest is cut down, pasture is planted, and later the soybeans.”

Costa confirmed the widespread irregularities identified by the experts. In a recent monitoring operation in northern Rondônia state, all the sawmills and logging sites with forest management plans that his team visited had irregularities. 

“In one of the forest management plans, it looked like the guy had dropped a nuclear bomb in the area because it was extreme exploitation,” he said. “He stored the wood on the property, and when he got more illegal timber credits he would take it to the sawmill.” In some cases, IBAMA agents fined the same sawmill or logger for the 10th or 20th time. “The punishment for this type of crime should be heavier. The guy ends up paying a basic food allowance, and that’s it,” Costa said. 

Many of the fines applied by IBAMA drag on in the courts and end up expiring. Historically, the environmental agency has been able to collect only 5% of the total fines issued per year, according to Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. “The profit from illegal timber is much higher than an environmental fine from IBAMA, which can take several years to be enforced,” Moye said. 

Experts also point to flaws in Brazil’s timber tracking system, which relies on self-declarations from the loggers and traders themselves. In some states, civil society groups have difficulty accessing the data. “The biggest bottleneck in the traceability system is the lack of transparency,” Imazon’s Damasceno said.

Such shortcomings can be overcome, however. Moye pointed to Romania, a country plagued by rampant illegal logging before the government implemented an app to increase control over the timber supply chain. Before beginning any transportation route, an individual or company carrying wood has to fill in information such as the driver’s name, the truck’s license plate number, the sender and recipient of the wood, and the type, amount, quality and species of the wood. They also have to upload photos of the truck and the logs. And, most importantly, their route is tracked in real-time by GPS. 

“This system at least makes fraud more difficult because it geolocates the person in real time,” Moye said. “It makes it harder to hide that you harvested the wood illegally at another time, in another place, and transported it to the sawmill.”

Until a trustworthy tracking system like this is in place in Brazil, those buying timber from the country can’t be 100% sure of the legality of the product. “There are serious companies in the Amazon, but they are weakened by the unequal competition from illegal timber, which is sold at a much lower price,” Damasceno said. 

Banner image:Illegal Brazilian timber was bought by companies in the U.S. and in European countries such as Denmark, Portugal, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Image courtesy of IBAMA.

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