“The company transported illegal wood from Mozambique to China several times between 2019 and 2021”, write the Danish Danwatch and Zitamar News, with offices in Maputo and London, referring to transports that add up to thousands of tons.
Consultation of documents confirmed several shipments, such as one on February 4, 2020, when a container ship owned by the Danish giant arrived at the port of Ningbo, China, with 255 tons of illegal wood on board from Beira, Mozambique.
“More specifically, whole, unprocessed trunks of the reddish-brown Nkula tropical tree species, which is only found in a few African countries and is estimated to be close to extinction”, refers in the report.
In January 2020, two other Maersk ships arrived at the same port in China with 4,000 tons of illegal timber coming from Mozambique, plus one of the data from Chinese foreigners that Danwatch and Zitamar News obtained through C4ADS, a United States organization that does data collection focused on illicit trade and global security.
There are still records in 2019 and 2021, these and other loads from Nkula, Mondzo and Chanato, all valuable wood varieties and on the list of native species of the Mozambican authorities.
The Danish giant, which did not contest having carried out this transport, is not expressly violating the law, explain the authors of the article after consulting Mozambican law and specialists in the field, but they denounce a practice that the group says it condemns and that it does bypassing a law.
Maersk recognizes that it has the responsibility to ensure that the cargo on the ships is legal, but it protects itself from the analysis that it is up to the authorities to approve a product for export. This is because the Mozambican law for timber exports only says that the export of unprocessed timber from native species is not allowed, but the ban makes no reference to transport or logistics.
In its latest sustainability report, Maersk writes that it is “particularly concerned with curbing the illegal timber trade” and that it is its policy “not to tolerate the transport of wild animals and plants prohibited by international or national legislation”, reads in the article. "We are aware that there are challenges, but it is a complex area," Maersk wrote in an email response to Danwatch and Zitamar News, saying he believes it is doing what it can to track cargo onboard its ships.
The Danish ambassador to Mozambique between 2011 and 2015, Mogens Pedersen, consulted in the context of this investigation, assured that the shipping giant has long been aware of the risk of its container ships being used to transport illegal timber from Mozambique to China.
Two of the exporters who sent "tropical" timber out of Mozambique via the MAERSK DOUALA and MAERSK NACALA vessels were meanwhile caught in breach of Mozambican timber laws.
