Belarusian timber enters the EU market despite sanctions, being supplied to Poland under false documentation while passed off as Kazakh wood, according to an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Schemes project, the Polish outlet Gazeta Wyborcza, and the Belarusian Investigative Center.
The EU imposed wide-reaching sanctions against Russia and its ally Belarus in March 2022 in reaction to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The restrictions extended to Belarusian timber, which has been traditionally imported into the EU in an amount worth over $1 billion every year.
After the imposition of the sanctions, wood imports from Kazakhstan to Poland increased from $15 million to almost $74 million between 2022 and 2023, even though Kazakhstan has very little forested land and supplied meager volumes to the EU before the full-scale war.
The journalists analyzed a contract and accompanying documents for the purchase of about 1 million euros ($1.1 million) worth of timber between the Polish company PLRBL and the Kazakh company Nurr-electro.
A representative of Nurr-electro told the journalists that the Kazakh company had never concluded such a contract, and graphic design experts said that the seals and signatures on the documents had been falsified.
An employee of Gallardo, a Belarusian company transporting the wood, told the journalists that the carriers never went to Kazakhstan and loaded the supplies in Belarus. According to the investigation, the scheme was implemented in collaboration with the Belarusian company SO RBL, whose owner, Belarusian Oleh Yanovych, is also the chairman of the board of the Polish PLRBL.
The journalists presented the results of the investigation to Polish authorities, but the country's customs officials said they do not have capacities to verify all customs declarations. Poland's Interior Ministry said it had opened an investigation based on the provided evidence but gave no further details.
In late February, Ukrainska Pravda reported that Polish truckers import increasingly high volumes of Russian grain through Belarus. While these products were not under sanctions, the purchases were on the rise even as Polish farmers protested agricultural imports from Ukraine.
Maria Yeryoma
