Two people were arrested during an operation of the Mato Grosso Civil Police, on Thursday (10), against a criminal organization involved with illegal wood extraction in Merry Natal, about 536 kilometers from the capital Cuiabá. Another 12 search and seizure warrants were fulfilled.
Searches occurred at residence and companies of the investigated companies also in the cities of Sorriso and Sinop. A 40-year-old man, named responsible for the logistics of cutting and removing the raw material from the Rio Ronuro Ecological Station reserve, was arrested.
Three loggers were embargoed by the State Secretariat of Environment (Sema) and someone else was arrested in the act for illegal possession of firearm after police found two 22 caliber pistols during the fulfillment of the steps.
Operation Orcs also seized documents, electronic devices and other materials that will undergo analysis to deepen the findings. The court orders came after the State Specialized Police Station (Dema) of the state investigating the environmental crime involving the extraction, transportation and illegal marketing of wood, in the northern region of Mato Grosso.
According to the Civil Police, the woods were illegally extracted from an important green area conservation unit between the Amazon rainforest and cerrado, and after being seized by the environmental supervisory bodies, were donated through bids.
The legislation allows the donation of wood biddingly by the environmental agencies and the Dema found that the woods were donated to the sports guild, and this, by bidding in the form of fraudulent auction, returned with the woods to the loggers of the criminal group. The corporation points out that the State Secretariat of the Environment had no knowledge or participation in the investigated facts.
However, investigations point out the possible involvement of public agents, logging owners, forest engineers with a history of environmental crimes, carriers and intermediaries that facilitated the flow of illegal wood.
Among the irregularities identified in the donations to the sports guild are the absence of formalization of the circumstances of the seizures, absence of a deposit term indicating the guard of the materials, lack of prior evaluation of wood logs and judicial authorization for the sale of the wood, and the non -regularization of the wood with the State Secretariat of the Environment.
Some of the investigated loggers kept intense commercial activity in the system of commercialization and transportation of forest products, proceeding with several forest guides suspected of fraud, indicating, as the investigation pointed out, constant flow of illegal wood.
This content was originally published in Merry Natal: Police dismantle illegal wood extraction scheme on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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