INVESTIGATIONS

Getting EUDR enforcement right

08.05.2025

A series of articles on the enforcement of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

The EU’s flagship supply chain law will come into effect at the end of 2025. National Competent Authorities are getting ready to assess the first wave of due diligence statements from importers and traders. But for the EUDR to have the desired effect, it is essential that EU Member States and the European Commission take the right approach to implementing and enforcing it.

Blood-stained birch

29.01.2025

A nine-month undercover investigation by Earthsight has revealed widespread laundering of Russian and Belarusian timber into the EU in breach of sanctions put in place in response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

‘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.

Secret Ingredient

26.09.2024

Earthsight’s latest investigation traces soy linked to illegal deforestation, land grabbing, corruption, and violence against traditional communities in the Brazilian Cerrado to chicken found on the shelves of Europe’s leading supermarkets – Carrefour, Intermarché, Edeka and Albert Heijn – and in fast-food giant McDonald’s.

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 can reveal that the world’s largest fashion brands, H&M and Zara, use cotton linked to land grabbing, illegal deforestation, violence, human rights violations and corruption in Brazil.

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

A new Earthsight investigation reveals how Ikea has for years sold children's furniture made from wood linked to vast illegal logging in protected forests in Russia.

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

The Brazilian flooring giant let off the hook by Bolsonaro's government and now thriving across the US and EU.

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

How European firms fed a Russia tycoon's billion-dollar illegal logging scam. Alexander Pudovkin is the Taiga King.

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

The luxury cars made with leather from the stolen lands of an uncontacted tribe.

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

A new Earthsight investigation unpacks Ikea's illegal timber problem in Ukraine and the flawed green label behind it.

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.

Investigation

UK military beef supplier linked to Brazil illegal deforestation

28.04.2020

Investigation

Robinson Lumber's perilous trade with Peru's Maderera Bozovich

06.01.2020

Investigation

EU demand for oak flooring fuels corruption and violence in Ukraine

19.12.2019

Investigation

British troops fed by meat giant JBS tied to Amazon destruction

17.09.2019

Investigation

African timber from firms linked to illegalities floods into France

05.07.2019

Investigation

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

03.06.2019

A 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

The land deals behind the downfall of Indonesia’s top judge. This is the second installment of Indonesia for Sale, an in-depth series on the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis.

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.

Investigation

Luxury US yachts being supplied with suspect Burmese teak

19.10.2017

Investigation

Top US plywood importer in league with one of world's dirtiest timber firms

19.10.2017

Investigation

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.

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