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Police bust illegal Amazon logging ring - reports

29 Jun 2007 23:54:14 GMT
Source: Reuters

BRASILIA, June 29 (Reuters) - Brazilian police on Friday broke up a logging ring whose members are suspected of using fake permits to fell a half million trees in the biologically sensitive Amazon rain forest, media reports said.

Computer hackers and former state employees tapped into the government's electronic system and forged the permits so loggers could transport illegal lumber, the reports said.

"These are gangsters not loggers," police officer Sergio Rovani from Belem, a city at the mouth of the Amazon river, told Globo television. "This is a million-dollar fraud."

Some 155 illegal loggers were involved in the ring, which may have netted 16 million reais ($8 million) from just one operation, according to state news agency Agencia Brasil.

Police officers in Belem were not available to comment.

Police have broken up several illegal logging rings in the past two years, winning praise from environmentalists.

The government has long been criticized for failing to crack down on crime in the continent-sized Amazon, which covers half of Brazil and holds a fifth of the world's fresh water and some 15 percent of all plant and animal species on Earth.

Friday's operation, Green Gold II, took its name from a bigger operation in 2005. In Green Gold I, several government environmental agents were arrested on suspicion of printing fake documents to help illegal loggers transport lumber.

Environment Minister Marina Silva rolled out a new system of state-issued electronic forestry permits last year in an effort to make fraud more difficult.

Some conservationists criticized the move, saying state officials lacked the funding and training to oversee the system themselves.

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Last updated:Fri Jun 29 23:55:29 2007