(Ecofin Agency) - Fraudulent forest exploitation costs Cote d’Ivoire around FCFA22 billion each year. The ministry of water and forests has thus decided to sanction all firms that pursue such practices.

Louis-André Dacoury Tabley, the minister of water and forests, has recently discovered that Thanry was one of the firms practicing these illegal activities. The crime was denounced in a note from the minister, which APA obtained, as “one the most important frauds in Cote d’Ivoire in terms of forest exploitation”. According to some of the firm’s workers who demanded not to be named, “thousands of wood logs have been stored at the firm’s park. Nothing unusual at first sight, but a thorough inspection would reveal the fraud. There are no writings on the logs to determine where they were cut. The firm has been doing this for years now”.   

Given the size of the fraud, the government demanded the closure of Thanry, one of the country’s oldest wood industrials. Since independence, Cote d’Ivoire has lost about 14 million hectares of forests.

Aaron Akinocho