State of Corruption: The Top Level Conspiracy behind the Global Trade in Myanmar's Stolen Teak
Publisher: Environmental Investigation Agency
Date: 2019
Topics: Governance, Renewable Resources
Countries: Myanmar
The forests of Myanmar are defined by their monetary value and have been part of the military and economic elites’ profits and, in some cases, survival for decades. The entire legal state forestry and timber trade sectors are riddled with corruption.
Current laws seem to seek the criminalisation of local people and the Government is undermining the communities’ reliance on resources while at the same time introducing a centralised system of management they are unable to implement.
Myanmar’s government presents the teak trade as being wholly legal and sustainable, produced in compliance with the rule of law. This is simply not the case.
A two-year undercover investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) into a near-mythic ‘Burmese teak kingpin’ who conspired with and bribed the most senior military and government officials in Myanmar has revealed how he was able to establish a system of fraudulent trade. This was run in parallel to, and within, the official legal trade administered by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE) – a state-owned company with a monopoly on all logging and timber trade in the country.