Prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organised Crime and Special Cases (PCCOCS), together with officers from the National Investigation Inspectorate (INI) of the Police, have detained five people, following 60 searches carried out, in a case of illegal deforestation, which caused damages to the state of about one million lei.

The preliminary amount of damage is currently being assessed by the Environmental Protection Inspectorate. According to PCCOCS, the facts took place in September-December 2022, in the districts of Leova, Straseni, Ialoveni, Orhei, with the involvement of forestry enterprises.

“The five detained – heads of forestry offices and foresters – are aged between 34 and 63 years and acted jointly with employees with positions of engineers, foremen, accountants and foresters in the targeted enterprises. Thus, in order to create an appearance of legality, accounting documents were issued to the members of the criminal group, but they were false in nature; and primary materials with incorrect data were drawn up. Moreover, illegal deforestation took place by exceeding the norms indicated in the general deforestation permits issued by the Moldsilva Agency.

Subsequently, wood for heating was sold mainly to economic agents at a price of 1000-1200 lei per metre pound, who in turn, through complicity, sold it to end consumers at a price of 1800 lei per metre pound. The illegal profit was then shared with the employees of the businesses concerned. It should also be mentioned that during the searches, carried out with the assistance of DGUP (General Directorate for Criminal Investigation) and “Fulger” employees of the Police, 800,000 lei were seized, which would be part of the illegal profit obtained”, the representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office announce.

According to the PCCOCS, investigations are continuing into other persons, while they are invoking the presumption of innocence, according to the law. “The PCCOCS prosecutors, together with the investigation officers, are going to investigate the existing evidence to determine the necessity of requesting the application of preventive arrest for the five detainees.”

In November 2022, ZdG published an investigation into the middlemen selling firewood, which stated that the middlemen, whom the government promised to remove from the market, were selling firewood at double the price. Often the middlemen became the foresters themselves.