National parks often sell timber for nothing, and officials of these institutions pocket the difference between the true value and the selling price.
Former employees of one of the national parks, now military officers, told Ukrainian MP Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk about this, and she published this information on her Facebook page.
According to them, shady schemes are operating in national parks across Ukraine. Former employees claim that officials deliberately underestimate the value of the forest by up to 5 times.
Olha Vasylevska-Smahliuk says that three-quarters of national parks hide information about timber sales altogether. Only a fourth of them use the electronic timber accounting system, which allows the public to find out information about sales volumes and prices.
The deputy says that unlike state and many communal forest farms, national parks sell wood not through a specialized exchange, but through direct contracts. Therefore, the price of wood of the same class, quality and diameter from the national park and the neighboring forest farm can often differ many times. As an example, Vasylevska-Smaglyuk cites oak with a market value of UAH 9,000 per cubic meter. m, which is sold at the price of UAH 1.8 thousand.
According to her, more than 40 national parks in Ukraine are engaged in the sale of wood, and the volume of sales is quite significant.
The deputy compared the average selling prices of national parks from the beginning of 2024 with prices on the stock exchange. Here are the numbers she got:
- NPP "Synevyr" sells spruce cheaper than the exchange by 1.2-1.5 thousand UAH per cubic meter. m.
- NPP "Hutsulshchyna": the difference with the exchange on a cube of fir is 400-500 UAH.
- NPP "Karpatskyi" sells a cube of spruce for 600-1000 UAH cheaper than market prices.
- NPP "Yavorivskyi" undercuts the price of oak by half.
- NPP "Kremenetski Gory": the prices of oak and ash differ three times from the exchange prices.
- NPP "Vyzhnytskyi": prices for fir differ from the exchange price by almost twice.
Olga Vasylevska-Smaglyuk emphasized that these are only data for a quarter of national parks that enter data into the EOD. She assumed that at other enterprises of the Ministry of Environment, all wood is generally sold at the price of firewood.
The former employees suspect Olena Kramarenko, the newly appointed first deputy minister of environmental protection, who is the curator of the field of national parks in the department, of involvement in these illegal devices.
"Recently, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine appointed Svitlana Grynchuk as the new head of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine. We hope for personnel cleaning of the ecological sphere from dirty schemes. Since there are currently positive personnel changes in the department, I hope for an immediate reaction to the blatant schemes that our defenders inform me about," Olha Vasylevska-Smaglyuk wrote.
Now it turns out that hopes did not come true...
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Olena Kramarenko as the First Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine.
