Specialists of the Mykolaiv Regional and Lutsk District Prosecutor's Offices exposed illegal logging for more than 1 million UAH and demanded back to the state property illegally alienated land plots of the forest fund worth more than 7 million UAH and 11 million UAH, respectively.
They reported this on the pages of departments on Facebook.
In Mykolaiv region, 4 members of an organized criminal group illegally cut down and sold trees of protective forest plantations for their own enrichment.
From December 2023 to March 2024, the defendants operated on the territory of the Ascension and Pervomaisky districts of the Nikolaev region. They made 11 trips related to felling trees in protective plantations of a linear type. Then they organized transportation and further storage for the purpose of selling illegally obtained wood.
By their criminal actions, the dealers caused losses to the state in the amount of over 1 million hryvnias. The prosecutor's office filed a civil lawsuit against the defendants in order to compensate for the damage caused.
Extras face up to 7 years in prison.
The prosecutors of the Lutsk District Prosecutor's Office in a court order demanded from private property to the ownership of the state a land plot of the forest fund with an area of 1 ha and a value of over 7 million UAH in the Lutsk district. The experts found out that initially it was used by the state enterprise "Kivertsiv Forestry", and later it was unjustifiably classified as agricultural land, transferred to communal, and later – to private ownership.
The Commercial Court of the Volyn region satisfied two lawsuits of the Kovel district prosecutor's office to claim from the state ownership of land plots for forestry purposes worth more than UAH 11 million.
Prosecutors found out that the lands used by the state forestry enterprise were illegally inventoried as agricultural lands and transferred to communal ownership. The court returned them to the state.
Ecopolitics reports almost every day about illegal felling of trees in various regions of Ukraine. Almost all of them are carried out by organized criminal groups, which include forestry officials. Yes, on July 4, we talked about a criminal group that, with the help of officials, illegally cut down trees for 7 million hryvnias on the territory of Manevytskyi and Kolkivskyi forestry enterprises in Volyn.
1st of July Ecopolitika reported immediately about two cases of illegal logging worth UAH 5.2 million, which the SBI referred to the court: the first – regarding an official of one of the forestry companies in Zakarpattia, who caused damage of UAH 1.5 million, the second – regarding a forester and two forest masters Berehomet forest and hunting farm, which caused losses to the state of almost 3.7 million hryvnias.
At the end of June, we informed that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is in the exclusion zone the state enterprise conducted continuous "sanitary logging" without applying the environmental impact assessment procedure. Almost UAH 120 million worth of forest was illegally cut down here.
All these facts make us doubt the effectiveness of the forest reform, which has been going on for more than a year.
Earlier, we prepared a material stating that the forest reform is currently a result centralization of corruption and increased logging at times
The drafts of new normative legal acts that are appearing also do not give hope for improving the situation. Thus, the new draft law No. 9516 "On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine Regarding Effective Forest Management Based on Forestry Management Based on the Principles of Forestry Close to Nature, Adapted to Climate Change, and Conservation of Biodiversity in Forests" in the event of its adoption will allow cutting down forests with a profitability of 2400%.
And the government with its resolution No. 454 "Some issues of forestry management during the legal regime of martial law and amendments to the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated May 12, 2007 No. 724" can transform Logging for reshaping to the method of mass harvesting of commercial wood.
