Timber Tracking

• 24 August 2018
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Now that the new Sabah State government has begun to clean house with the sacking of Mannan and other clean up measures it should consider attempts at recovery of money obtained by Sabah companies through the destruction of the State’s forests and the export of the resultant timber.

However books in Sabah may have been cooked to conceal, or ty to conceal, the profits from the rape of the State’s forests there is one certain way to track all this down.

All the stolen timber had to be exported. There is no significant local market for it. Therefore, however crooked the processes in Sabah may have been, there have to be records of the disposal of timber shipped outside the country. For example to Hong Kong and Japan.

It is those records that will show how much and to whom and what payments came back to Sabah or to bank accounts elsewhere. Therefore the State government should pursue that line of enquiry which should yield massive revenue both in terms of fines and unpaid taxes. There is a cartel of dealers in timber who have profited massively from illegalities in the timber export trade and from failure to pay taxes thereon and the State government should go after them without delay and without mercy. They had no compunction in robbing the State and the latter should show none in dealing with them.