Illegal wood: Fraud ‘warmed up’ 1.2 billion m³ – 05/15/2023 – Environment

The operation by Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) that blocked 1.2 billion m³ of illegal wood in the country revealed a fraud scheme called the “inverse route”. The amount would yield R$ 2 billion to criminals, estimates the agency.

The suspects used the virtual wood credit market to heat the illegally extracted material.

The institute’s intelligence team identified in the National System for the Control of Forest Products (Sinaflor) timber credits registered as originating in places where there is usually no exploitation and which were sold to companies in areas where there is a high incidence of irregular extraction.

The virtual credit is a document issued for the sale of wood. The investigation believes that the so-called “inverse route” would serve to try to make the illegal input pass as legal.

Regular farms in the Midwest and Northeast issue virtual wood credits (without necessarily having extracted the product). This credit is sold to other farms, those suspected of operating in illegal extraction.

The second owner resells the same credit, but now using irregular wood.

Ibama’s investigation is part of the Metaverso operation, which, as the Sheethas generated a reaction from landowners, especially from the south of the Legal Amazon.

Farmers have mobilized politicians, used fake news and traveled to Brasília to try to contest the actions of the environmental agency. There have already been meetings at the Ministry of the Environment and at the institute itself to contest the actions.

For the president of Ibama, Rodrigo Agostinho, the inspection actions have generated reactions from the conservative wings of society. He even attributes the reaction of Bolsonaristas to the case of the capybara Filó to this scenario.

“They are attacking Ibama because we have many actions in Amazonas, embargoing deforested areas, seizures of cattle in indigenous lands, in conservation units. This case ended up serving to try to disqualify the work”, he told the Sheet.

The Metaverso operation has already carried out actions in Acre, Amapá, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Roraima and Tocantins, in addition to the Federal District.

One of the reverse wood routes identified by Ibama begins, precisely, with a company headquartered in Brasília.

This farm sold 2,440 m³ of virtual credits to another, located in the city of Escada, in the state of Pernambuco, which then transferred 8,018 m³ to a third property, in Vilhena, in Rondônia.

Another route departs from Prado, in Bahia, and goes to two other cities in Rondônia: Ji Paraná and Nova Mamoré, and is then distributed to other properties in Amazonas.

The state capital, Porto Velho, and neighboring Arquimedes were the destinations for credits from the Paraíba Cajazeiras.

The operation identified 30 companies in Rondônia that received virtual credits from places where there is usually no extraction. The properties are “generally in regions close to indigenous lands, conservation units and places where the rate of deforestation is on a large scale”, says an Ibama report.

Last Thursday (11), the institute, together with Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples) and the PF (Federal Police), carried out an operation in the Karipuna Indigenous Land, which is located in the state, to remove invaders involved in deforestation. and illegal logging.

This morning’s action focused on the 12 biggest alert points within the indigenous land, and 20 loggers were targeted for defrauding credit issues in the Forest Origin Document System, according to the PF.

According to the police, the scheme is used to “warm up” the origin of forest products that are sold illegally, that is, to give the appearance of legality through oranges and fraudulent management plans.

Just recently, Ibama fined BRL 57 million for another fraud scheme to heat illegal wood, identified through satellite image monitoring.

“The work of monitoring the wood transactions in the control systems made it possible to identify the fraud and prevent virtual wood credits from continuing to cover up wood extracted from unauthorized areas”, concludes the Ibama report on reverse route fraud.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}