Court jails captain for timber smuggling

Court jails captain for timber smuggling

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A district court dealt the government's fight against illegal
logging a big blow on Wednesday, handing out a lenient sentence
to a Vietnamese boat skipper caught red-handed smuggling logs
from an offshore island in Papua last year.

The North Jakarta District Court jailed Ngo Van Tuan for two
years for his role in transporting logs from Papua to China via
Singapore. Indonesia bans the sale of logs to foreign countries.

The court also confiscated Rp 6.8 billion (US$755,500) in cash
generated from the sale of some 15,000 cubic meters of the
illegal logs and the Mongolian-flag Bravery Falcon ship, which
carried the timber.

Prosecutors had earlier demanded four years' jail for the only
suspect in the case, who immediately appealed the verdict.

Only about 3,000 cubic meters of the timber found on the boat
had legal certificates. They was known to have been sold by PT
Hasrat Wira Mandiri, a Jakarta-based concessionaire holder, to a
Malaysian businessman, Lim Tiong Cheng, through PT Kalang Group
in the South Kalimantan capital of Banjarmasin.

However, some Vietnamese crew of the Bravery Falcon said in
their testimony that Singapore-based company V Maritime had
ordered the transport of the logs from Papua.

Police arrested Ngo while he was sailing in the Java Sea off
Jakarta en route to Singapore in December last year and named him
a suspect immediately.

They did not investigate any executives of PT Kalang or the
Singaporean firm implicated in the case and prosecutors never
prodded them to do so.

Ruling that Ngo had only delivered the illegal logs, the panel
of judges led by Sareh Wiyono called for an investigation into
the "intellectual actors" behind the crime.

Ngo's lawyer, John K. Azis, said the Indonesian authorities
should chase after the sellers and buyers along with the
middleman.

Environmental activists had earlier urged the government to
issue a government regulation in lieu of a law to speed up the
prosecution of those suspected of illegal logging.

They said the existing legal procedures could take months;
easily enough time for suspects to destroy evidence or flee the
country.

However, Minister of Forestry Malam Sambat Kaban insisted on
Wednesday the current laws were sufficient to combat illegal
logging.

"The government has announced its political will to tackle the
issue. What we must do now is to take action. I am sure the
police have already identified the alleged masterminds of the
illegal logging cases, so let's move," he said at the court
before the verdict was read.

Kaban said the police and prosecutors must indict operators of
illegal logging with multiple charges that could lead to their
bosses.

In most cases of log smuggling, the law enforcers only
prosecuted those physically carrying out the smuggling but never
those who ordered or sold the illegal logs.

The forestry ministry estimates there is some Rp 90 trillion
in state losses from illegal logging every year.