Cover of Global Witness’ Blood Timber report
In March 2018 Earthsight, the investigative non-profit behind Illegal Deforestation Monitor, released The Coming Storm, a report exposing the secrecy and collusion in industrial agriculture which are threatening the Congo Basin’s forests.
In an extract from
the report, this post exposes the controversial logging company behind the
largest new plantation development in CAR
While elsewhere in the region companies with licenses to
clear forests for industrial agriculture are struggling to fund their up-front
development costs, in Central African Republic (CAR), one notorious logging
company is getting involved in the plantation business and is having little
trouble attracting finance.
The country’s first large-scale plantation development is underway in the south of the country, covering some 26,000 hectares (ha).
The Palme d’Or oil palm project is owned by the Lebanese El Sahely brothers, who are the country’s biggest private sector employers.
Their principal asset is SEFCA, CAR’s largest logging company. SEFCA, which is responsible for more than half of all the country’s tropical timber production and exports, has been accused in the past of illegal logging.
It also stands accused of helping fund armed conflict.
An investigation by the NGO Global Witness revealed that in 2013 the company paid hundreds of thousands of euros to the Seleka Islamic terrorist group, which briefly overran the country’s capital city of Bangui that year.
In
October 2013, a multinational peace-keeping mission found Seleka soldiers and
munitions at SEFCA’s Bangui headquarters.
Despite the shady reputation of its owners, African regional banks seem confident, and have committed nearly $15 million to fund the development to-date.
Satellite images show around 2,000ha had been
developed by the end of 2017. To date the company has cleared only savannah-woodland
areas and avoided the densest pockets of forest within its concession.
