Logging watchdogs today revealed a video recording which allegedly shows Malaysian businessmen involved in laundering illegal timber from Indonesia in local ports right under the noses of the authorities.

Environmental Investigation Agency and the Indonesia-based Telapak caught on tape port officials and Malaysian businessmen admitting that smuggled Indonesian ramin wood was being processed and re-labelled as 'Malaysian ramin' to bypass the convention on international trade in endangered species (Cites).

Indonesia has banned the harvesting and exporting of ramin wood.

The video was screened at the Putra World Trade Centre this morning to journalists and delegates attending the seventh Conference on Biological Diversity.

The recording included businessmen making the allegation that Malaysian customs officers at the Tanjung Manis port near Sibu were paid to permit illegal shipments of Indonesian ramin.

A director of the Johor port authority's break bulk department was also allegedly filmed identifying the stacks of sawn timber in the warehouses of Pasir Gudang and Tanjung Pelepas ports as Indonesian ramin.

"Ninety-nine per cent of this is smuggled," a shipping agent was seen telling EIA-Telapak investigators posing as businessmen, while standing in front of stacks of air-drying Indonesian ramin.

Trade sanctions

The video arrived at the heels of another EIA-Telapak report released this week (available online), and a proposal by eight environmental groups that the United States place trade sanctions against Malaysia for allegedly "permitting and perhaps even actively facilitating this illegal trade (of Indonesian ramin)".

The groups - such as EIA, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network - said in their letter to US secretary of state Colin Powell that they intend to file a petition for trade sanctions - allowable under US law - unless Malaysia takes "significant and verifiable" measures against the illegal timber trade within 90 days.

The EIA-Telapak report claimed that the ramin smuggling racket resulted from Indonesia's failure to enforce its laws, and "Malaysia's callous complicity in protecting its own ramin processing industry."

Met later, EIA officer Sam Lawson said past efforts to inform the Primary Industries Ministry, the Malaysian Timber Industry Board (MTIB), and Sarawak forestry department have been met with complete silence - at least until this week.

The organisation's president Allan Thornton told malaysiakini that they have been asked to meet with Primary Industries Minister Lim Keng Yaik next Thursday.

He added that he will also address the minister's claim that the organisation's report "was at times based on falsified information".

Indonesia's problem

Lim was quoted by the New Straits Times today as denying that there was any official complicity in timber smuggling.

He stressed that authorities do not provide certificates of origin for Indonesian timber and the accusations by the environmental groups was an attempt to pressure Malaysia into banning the trade on ramin entirely.

Malaysian officials at today's press conference did not take the accusations by EIA and Telapak lying down.

Primary industry deputy secretary-general Suboh Mohamad Yassin, who is also a conference delegate, said Malaysia had already made efforts to curb the illegal trade, starting with laws passed in June 2002 and Jan 2001 to stop the import of illegal logs from Indonesia.

Malaysia, he said, should not be blamed as it has made efforts to stem the trade, beginning with 12 arrests involving ramin import. "Address the heart of the matter in Indonesia," he said.

'Wild claims'

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Timber Council said in a statement today that the alleged transhipment of ramin referred by EIA and Telapak occurred within a free trade zone - areas considered outside of Malaysia.

"It is libellous and even mischievous to even suggest that Malaysia is undermining Cites.

"It is unfair and illogical to draw the conclusion that proof of illegal Indonesian ramin import is evidenced by the steady rise of ramin export," it stressed.

Both organisations, it added, should also not make "flippant" and "wild claims" that Malaysia's partial reservation on Cites - over the exclusion of ramin parts and derivatives from certification - was done to confuse the market and facilitate illegal trade.