Russian police have smashed a massive illegal logging operation led by an ‘Asian’ businessman who covertly harvested millions of pounds worth of timber from ancient forests in Siberia.

Police did not specify the final destination for the timber other than to say it was a “foreign economic contract to one of the states of East Asia”.

However, logging bans in China’s forests have generated a vast demand for timber – both legal and illegal – from neighbouring countries. Police have identified sales of RUB 1.3 billion (GBP 14.6 million) so far from the gang arrested this week.

Around two-thirds of Russian timber exports are to China, where factories process it into furniture and flooring. The products are either exported around the globe or, increasingly, sold to the country’s soaring middle class.

Not just China but also other countries in the region like South Korea, have been implicated in receiving illegally harvested timber from the vast forests of the Russian Far East and Siberia, representing one of the last great forest wildernesses in the world.

These forests containing large expanses of boreal and northern temperate forest type are of global importance as a habitat for rare and endangered species, for the richness of biodiversity in areas such as the Sikhote-Alin Mountain Range and Sakhalin Island, and to help mitigate against the effects of global climate change.

However, despite the seeming vastness of the forests in the Russian Far East and Siberia, they are becoming increasingly fragmented, particularly in the accessible southern areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East and much of this fragmentation is a result of industrial forestry.

In the latest crackdown, employees of the East Siberian Region Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia confirmed the arrests saying that the gang purchased illegally harvested wood in the Irkutsk region.

They then set up a company that submitted deliberately false documents on the origin of goods to the customs authorities.

After that, sawn timber was sold under a foreign economic contract to one of the states of East Asia.

More than 200,000 cubic metres of wood were smuggled out of the Russian Federation, and the damage amounted to over RUB 1.3 billion.

The Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Police General of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kolokoltsev, said in a statement obtained by Newsflash that eight people had so far been arrested and detained and search was going on for others involved in the massive fraud.

He said: “They are accused of committing 44 episodes of illegal activities related to forest smuggling, illegal creation of a legal entity, legalization of money obtained by criminal means.”

He said that the criminal gangs started operating in 2017 when a ‘citizen of one of the states of East Asia’ together with an Irkutsk businessman, created a criminal organization which specialized in the illegal circulation of timber and its sale abroad.

He said: “They involved local residents and foreign citizens in illegal activities. The community had a clear hierarchy and structure, the roles of the participants were distributed.

“The head office was responsible for the documentation of activities. He was also responsible for financial transactions on transactions, obtaining phytosanitary documents, entering information into a specialized information system.

“In addition, the so-called production unit functioned as part of the community. His duties included organizing the acceptance, processing and storage of illegally harvested timber, the supply and departure of lorries.

“The reception points were equipped with various equipment: loaders, sawmills, cranes.”

During the investigation, more than 130 witnesses were interrogated, more than 50 searches and seizures were carried out, a large number of documents and technical equipment were seized, more than 30 different examinations were appointed.

The property of the accused was seized for an amount exceeding RUB 70 million.