Prague, June 8 (CTK) – The illegal cutting of trees in Czech forests has assumed the dimensions of organised crime which is due to the high prices of wood, and the damage caused reaches dozens of millions of crowns, weekly Tyden writes in its latest issue out yesterday.
Stooges, firms always changing their names and a network of collaborators, these are the features of the gangs plundering Czech forests, which the Czech Environmental Inspectorate (CIZP) has found out and of which the police also have knowledge, Tyden writes.
Police Presidium spokesman David Schoen told Tyden that the criminals make use of sham forest owners, selected woodcutters and mainly attempts to obscure the origin of wood in trading in it.
“The perpetrators often change localities to make their exposure and the proving of personnel links between individual cases more difficult,” he said.
Tyden writes that the shady dealers change not only the names of their firms, but also the methods of illegal tree cutting.
One firm cooperates with a real estate agency that marks forest areas suitable for sale. A broker offers the seller payment in cash and secures a lightning transfer of the land. The main organiser then turns to forest workers who make a saw cut in the trees, Tyden writes.
It writes that the new owner of the forest reports to the police that someone has damaged his trees and at the same time he asks the relevant office for permission to cut the trees so that they do not endanger the forest visitors.
The office has no other possibility but to permit the cutting, Tyden writes.
It writes that another method rests in that a forest firm hires a private forest, cuts the trees without the owner’s knowledge, disappears from the region and the firm officially winds up its activities.
“In each 2012 and 2013, we handed the police one criminal complaint of illegal wood cutting, last year there were three such complaints and this year one as yet,” Pavel Zima, head of the CZPI forest protection department, said.
The police have dealt with more such cases. There were dozens in the past few years, the biggest number, 13, being in 2013, Tyden writes.
Unless the large-scale tree cutting reaches the police stage, the CIZP punishes the perpetrators with relatively high fines. In 2013, they totalled around 12 million crowns, last year more than 4.5 million, Tyden writes.
It writes that the authorities never succeed in exacting a part of the fines, while the level of the damage caused to the forests is usually higher than the fines. The plundering of around 50 hectares of forests annually causes a damage worth about 100 million crowns, Tyden writes.
However, the police do not always succeed in proving the perpetrators’ guilt. Schoen said five out of 13 cases investigated in 2013 ended with making an accusation, Tyden writes.
It writes that the hearings before court usually take years. Last week, a man was found guilty of having a forest illegally cut down in 2010 already. He was brought to the court room by an escort because meanwhile, he was sent to prison for 3.5 years for another case of illegal tree cutting.
($1=24.426 crowns)
