The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has said the Samling Group-the same company near the center of the ongoing antidumping and countervailing duty investigations-could be selling illegally sourced wood products in the United States, putting domestic importers in violation of the Lacey Act.
EIA bases its finding on a Greenpeace Australia report that describes how a subsidiary of the Samling Group, Australian Wood Panels, is allegedly supplying builders in that country with illegally sourced plywood. In addition, "New data revealed by the [EIA] show that the same source is also a significant supplier to the United States market," according to an EIA release.
In May 2008, the 100-year-old Lacey Act was amended to ban commerce in illegally sourced wood and wood products, including wood flooring.
"Any company importing flooring made by Samling, particularly if it is flooring made from tropical hardwoods, should pay close attention to their 'due care' procedures," said EIA's Andrea Johnson.
EIA does not provide concrete dates for the infractions but only said Samling Group sells plywood "made from forests in Malaysia where systematic illegal logging has taken place." Samling Group is headquartered in Sarawak, Malaysia, and controls forest concessions in Guyana, China, Malaysia and New Zealand. EIA was unable to confirm that raw material for Samling Group's wood flooring sold in the U.S. has ever been illegally sourced, but it did note that, according to a 2009 report from Samling Group, 13.3 percent of the company's plywood exports end up in the U.S. and that the "majority" of Samling Group's log production is sourced from Malaysian forests.
In a separate report, EIA has said the army of Vietnam is running a multi-million-dollar timber smuggling scheme in neighboring Laos, which has a ban on exporting raw timber. According to an EIA release, Laos' ban "is routinely flouted on a massive scale to feed the ravenous timber processing industries of Vietnam, China and Thailand." EIA agents discovered the crimes by posing as timber buyers. The agents determined that the army in Vietnam is running the logging operation via the Vietnamese Company of Economic Cooperation.
