Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation

[geovalin]

• A Mongabay investigation indicates that a three-star military general who also serves as a top interior ministry official appears to be the notorious illegal logger known as Oknha Chey.
•  Family and business ties link Meuk Saphannareth to logging operations in northern Cambodia that satellite imagery shows are clearing forest well outside their concession boundaries.
•  Officials at the provincial level could not give a clear answer as to why the concession had seemingly been awarded to Oknha Chey, while the interior ministry ignored Mongabay’s questions about the allegations against Saphannareth.
•  Some names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.

 

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.
 
SIEM PANG, Cambodia — “Us locals cannot source benefits from the forest anymore, only the Oknhas can find benefits in the forest now,” Samnang* said one afternoon in January, using a Khmer word for tycoons.

His farm sits on the eastern banks of the Sekong River, in Siem Pang, a district of Cambodia’s northeastern Stung Treng province, which shares a border with Laos. Behind his small patch of land, a vast canopy of green stretches out as far as the horizon, with densely forested mountains rising against the skyline.
 

read more https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/logged-and-loaded-cambodian-prison-official-suspected-in-massive-legalized-logging-operation/