Brazil’s Federal Police conducts operation to inspect timber shipments

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Federal Police yesterday, February 11, launched an operation to inspect timber shipments in the port of Manaus. The effort involved 30 Federal Police officers, agents from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and, as trainees, representatives from Colombia, Spain, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Panama, Paraguay, Portugal, and Russia.

The initiative intended to use knowledge about how to identify potential fraud in shipments by checking the species, volumes, and information contained in the timber documentation.

This was the last stage of a course on timber inspection, provided to customs officers from Latin America, Europe, and the United States since February 7, at the Center for Integration and Improvement in Environmental Police (CIAPA), the Federal Police’s base in the Amazon forest.

ILLEGAL TIMBER

The course included the participation of a guest professor from the Federal Technological University of Paraná, who developed software capable of identifying the tree’s species through a photo taken by cell phone of a piece of wood, thus preventing one of the most common types of fraud in the illegal timber trade.

The Legal Timber Project is supported by El Pacto Europa-Latino America-Transnational Organized Crime Assistance Program, which prioritizes the Federal Police in the fight against international timber trafficking. The organization aims to carry out joint operations between Latin American and European Union countries.

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