During a raid on October 11, eco-inspectors caught employees of the state-owned specialized enterprise "Northern Forest" who were transporting wood from the territory of the Chernobyl radiation and ecological reserve without documents, and issued two resolutions for UAH 510 each.
This was reported by the State Environmental Inspection (DEI) of the Capital District.
The tractor driver of the state-owned enterprise was transporting pine wood with a volume of 7.2 cubic meters to the warehouse. m from quarter 57, section 3 of the Korohoda Forestry. He did not have any documents for this: neither a consignment note nor tags.
The forest master of the "Northern Pushcha" chipboard did not issue the relevant documents for the timber products. That is why DEI inspectors drew up two administrative offense reports against him and the tractor driver under Article 64 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and imposed two fines of UAH 510 each.
The huge corruption background of "Northern Forest" allows us to assume that the practice of exporting wood without documents is daily and routine at the state-owned enterprise, it is just occasionally witnessed by eco-inspectors.
It is worth reminding that in September 2022, the then Minister of Environmental Protection Ruslan Strelets promised , that "the activity of the "Northern Pushcha" DSP, which is related to forestry management, will be completely stopped." As you can see, two years have passed, and it continues.
In 2024, the State Audit Service audited the activities of the "Northern Forest" state-owned enterprise and stunned the total amount of damages is 264 million UAH. In particular, among the violations, the inspectors noted the illegal demolition of hundred-year-old trees worth UAH 120 million under the guise of "sanitary felling."
Specialists of the State Audit Service also found out that due to inefficient management, the company suffers from chronic underfunding, most of the assets of "Northern Forest" have been written off or lost, and the conclusion of unprofitable contracts has led to multi-million losses. The company has a lot of arrears on salaries for employees, but this did not prevent DSP from increasing the costs of excessive allowances for the management.
One of the high-terrain forest patrol cars with firefighting equipment worth almost UAH 1 million, which was purchased for "Northern Forest" with budget funds, in general just disappeared .
