Blood-stained birch
29.01.2025
‘Blood timber’ with a retail value of over €1.5bn is estimated to have entered the EU since sanctions took effect in July 2022. Twenty container-loads continue to arrive every day.
INVESTIGATIONS
Secret Ingredient
26.09.2024
This tainted soy, used as feed in European chicken farms, is the secret ingredient in popular chicken products that links unwitting consumers to destruction and rights abuses in the Brazilian Cerrado.
Fashion Crimes
11.04.2024
Earthsight investigators spent over a year analysing satellite images, court rulings, shipment records and going undercover at global trade shows to trace nearly a million tonnes of tainted cotton from some of the most notorious estates in Brazil to clothing manufacturers in Asia that are suppliers of the world’s two largest fashion retailers.
Rubber-Stamping Repression
25.11.2022
Earthsight uncovers the bloody truth behind furniture manufacture in Belarus and its export to key European markets, detailing links between some of Europe’s largest furniture retailers and forced penal labour in Belarus.
Furthermore, we reveal how one of the worlds largest green certification schemes helped to greenwash the prison-workshops products, while EU authorities turned a blind eye to furniture imports from a country that is otherwise subject to trade sanctions.
The Fixers
29.09.2022
Through a series of case studies, The Fixers chronicles the corruption allegations, illegal logging practices and indigenous rights infringements by Brazil’s biggest flooring company, Indusparquet, and its suppliers.
In a joint investigation with Mongabay we detail how Indusparquet is charged with using fixers to illegally grease the wheels of its timber supply chains, how it has sourced wood from indigenous lands and from suppliers fined millions for illegal practices to make its products.
Read the PDF here
Investigation
There Will Be Blood
10.05.2022
A new investigation by Earthsight and Brazilian agribusiness watch group De Olho nos Ruralistas reveals how British supermarkets and a major fast food outlet’s supply chains, along with German-produced pet food, are linked to indigenous rights abuses in Brazil
The report traces the plight of an indigenous Guarani Kaiowá community which has for years been fighting for their right to return to their ancestral homeland - land which was converted to industrial farming in the 1960’s by infamous cattle baron Jacintho Honório da Silva Filho - and reveals the brutal details of the murder of Marcos Veron, an indigenous leader who was killed while attempting to reclaim the disputed land for his community.
Investigation
Ikea's House of Horrors
15.07.2021
The brand's popular Sundvik children's range – which includes chairs, tables, beds and wardrobes – and Flisat doll's house are among the items likely tainted with illegal wood. Earthsight estimates that shoppers have been purchasing an Ikea product containing the suspect Russian lumber somewhere on earth every two minutes.
Investigation
Untamed Timber
02.02.2021
Tropical wood flooring exporter Indusparquet attempted to censor reports of its connection to a 2018 police operation to investigate suspected illegal practices and which led to the seizure of wood worth millions. Now Earthsight has uncovered the questionable circumstances under which a fine was cancelled and its confiscated timber released.
Investigation
Taiga King
16.12.2020
The 59-year-old boss of timber giant BM Group, Pudovkin has overseen one of Russia's largest logging scandals. Loggers used their powers to plunder precious taiga forests home to brown bears, wolves and lynx, harvesting illegal wood with a retail value exceeding $1bn. Much of the suspect timber was destined for Europe.
Investigation
Grand Theft Chaco
30.09.2020
A new Earthsight investigation has linked the illegal clearance of South American forest inhabited by one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes with some of Europe’s biggest car manufacturers. The clearances occurred in the Gran Chaco, a precious bioregion home to jaguars and giant anteaters whose forests are being destroyed faster than any others on earth.
Investigation
Flatpacked Forests
23.06.2020
Over 18 months, Earthsight has gone on the trail to investigate Ikea’s Ukrainian timber purchases. Using official files, on-the-ground reporting, satellite imagery and whistleblower accounts, Earthsight researchers followed supplies of suspect wood from Ukraine’s precious Carpathian forests to Ikea stores in the UK, US, Germany and elsewhere.
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Are KitKat sales helping line the pockets of a man who bribed Indonesia’s top judge?
05.07.2019
Investigation
EU firms buy timber from suspect at centre of $30m bribery case
03.06.2019A slew of companies are purchasing wood from a supplier owned by the wife of Ukraine’s former forestry chief, even though a criminal case against the couple is ongoing.
Investigation
Bad beef for UK shoppers?
05.05.2019
Leading supermarkets in the UK and Europe are feeding illegal deforestation fears as corned beef imports from a corruption-hit Brazilian firm persist.
JBS, the world's biggest meatpacker, has faced multiple corruption charges, complicity in modern-day slavery and was fined $8m in 2017 for illegal Amazon deforestation yet retailers continue to stock its corned beef products.
Investigation
The secret deal to destroy paradise
28.11.2018
The story behind the single biggest threat to the rainforests of Indonesia. The secret deal to destroy paradise is the third installment of Indonesia for Sale.
Built around three main investigative reports into specific deals which saw local people’s land stolen for the development of palm oil plantations, the series was also supported by short films and picture stories.
Investigation
US FLOORING GIANT BUYING WOOD FROM BRAZILIAN FIRM AT CENTRE OF ILLEGAL TIMBER SCANDAL
25.11.2018
Investigation
COMPLICIT IN CORRUPTION
14.07.2018
For two years Earthsight investigated illegal logging and timber corruption in Ukraine, and tracked connections to overseas markets.
Complicit in Corruption: How billion-dollar firms and European governments are failing Ukraine's forests reveals how illegality permeates the timber supply chain in Ukraine from harvest to export.
Investigation
Brazilian man goes on the run, accused of multiple murders - but US timber company still among top customers
26.04.2018
Investigation
Ghosts in the machine
18.04.2018
Built around three main investigative reports into specific deals which saw local people’s land stolen for the development of palm oil plantations, the series was also supported by short films and picture stories.
Investigation
THE COMING STORM
12.03.2018
An exposé into the destruction of the forests of the Congo Basin for industrial palm oil and rubber plantations. The Coming Storm reveals that 500sq km of forest has been bulldozed in the last five years and that the destruction is set to accelerate, as high-level corruption and some of the most notorious logging companies in the region combine to create a toxic mix.
Our investigation revealed that each of the largest logging firms in the Republic of Congo, DR Congo and Central African Republic are all now connected in some way with plantation projects clearing forests.
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The palm oil fiefdom
11.10.2017
A politician in Borneo turned his district into a sea of oil palm. Did it benefit the people who elected him, or the members of his family?
This article is the first installment of the Indonesia for Sale series. It is the product of nine months’ reporting across the Southeast Asian country, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them. Built around three main investigative reports into specific deals which saw local people’s land stolen for the development of palm oil plantations, the series was also supported by short films and picture stories.
Investigation
Choice Cuts
05.07.2017
An investigation exposing how European supermarkets are helping drive the most rapid tropical deforestation anywhere in the world. Charcoal produced from old-growth trees is being clear-felled in the Paraguayan dry Chaco forests and was found on sale in branches of Lidl, Aldi and Carrefour across Europe.
These forests are home to jaguars, giant anteaters and the only tribe living in isolation in South America outside the Amazon. Our investigation took us from the remote forest to the top of the Paraguayan government, exposing the role of a powerful minister in the ransacking of the Chaco.
