A Chinese-owned firm in Sofala province, which tried to defy a court order to hand over a consignment of illegal timber last month, is part of a network of businesses which has been illegally exporting large quantities of tropical wood from Mozambique for years, according to Chinese import records shared with Zitamar News by C4ADS, an investigative non-profit based in the US.

CAM International Lda. and at least three other timber trading firms associated with the company exported at least 1,025 timber shipments between 2019 and 2021 through the port of Beira, representing 8.7% of all timber shipments from Mozambique to China. However, closer analysis suggests they are also violating Mozambique’s log export ban as hundreds of these shipments may also contain native species in unprocessed log form.

Mozambique’s Ministry of Land and Environment (MTA) has tried to limit the export of timber in log form through the introduction of a log export ban that came into effect in 2018. This ban aims to protect Mozambique’s forests while promoting the industrialization of the timber sector and creating more jobs. The ban is still in effect today, and the MTA’s website clearly states that the forestry legislation “prohibits the export of wood in log or beam form of all native species.”

CAM Internacional was formed in 2013 by Jiye Zhuo and Zhizhen Hu, two Chinese nationals resident in Sofala Province. Jiye Zhuo is a partial owner of at least two other timber trading companies, Business Shipping Zhuo, a direct subsidiary of CAM Internacional, and Long Hua Internacional. Zhizhen Hu is a shareholder of at least one other timber trading company known as Dragon Internacional Lda. Combined they are the top exporter of timber by weight and the third-largest exporter in terms of shipments to China from Mozambique from 2019 to 2021. 

But Chinese import records show that one quarter of all of their shipments include a commodity code corresponding to “wood in the rough,” meaning unprocessed logs. These shipments amounted to more than 7,000 tonnes of logs, over half of which were also described as ‘tropical wood in the rough’ — likely including protected native hardwoods. In total, these shipments amounted to 5,344 tonnes and would violate Mozambique’s log export ban for all native species. 

Following the 2017 launch of ‘Operação Tronco’, Mozambican authorities have regularly seized shipments of illegal timber. But Chinese firms still consistently bypass the ban. Estimates suggest that between 2017 and 2020, firms in Mozambique illegally exported 2.6 million tonnes of logs worth $900 million in violation of the log export ban, and 99% of these shipments went to China. 

This isn’t CAM Internacional’s first brush with illegal timber harvesting activities. In September of 2021, Mozambique’s National Agency for Environmental Quality Control (AQUA) and National Inspectorate of Economic Activities (INAE) jointly dismantled one of their timber yards for possession of illegally harvested native hardwoods in log form, including ​​Guibourtia conjugata (Chacate Preto), Androstachys johnsonii (Mecrusse), and Pterocarpus angolensis (Umbila) species. The company was fined 3,045,603 meticais.

The fine is actually made out to the name of Kaman Lau Ming, another Chinese businessman in Mozambique who is a 5% shareholder of Jiye Zhuo’s security business Gigante Panda Segurança in 2020. Ming also has a single person company, Kaman Lau Ming Lda, whose timber was seized  and auctioned off by the state in September this year — despite the best efforts of Gigante Panda Segurança, whose agent shot at the tyres of a vehicle which had come to collect the wood.

Illegal timber harvesting is a serious issue for Mozambique. In March of 2022, The Ministry of Land and Environment (MTA) reported that illegal logging in Mozambique costs the state “an estimated US$200 million a year in lost tax revenue.” And without further enforcement of MTA’s regulations and forestry law reform in China, the rampant and illegal export of native Mozambican timber will continue. 

The MTA failed to respond to any of Zitamar’s questions about the Chinese import data or about CAM and related entities’ activities.

Zitamar made repeated attempts to contact CAM, Jiye Zhuo, and Kaman Lau Ming regarding this story, but without success.

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