![]() ![]() If one believes official records, timber was arriving in the European Union from countries almost devoid of forests, with landscapes that are often steppe-like. Meanwhile, forests account for only 4.5 percent of Kazakhstan’s territory and 5 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s. Imports from Kazakhstan to the EU increased by as much as 8,000 times. When Belarusian trading was blocked by sanctions, timber supplies suddenly took off from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Belarus sold €1.37 billion worth of raw material to the EU. Counterfeiting? No problemĭespite the sanctions, traders of wooden products from Russia and Belarus are thriving in Poland.īefore sanctions were imposed (successive packages of sanctions were introduced between February and June 2022), Lukashenko’s country was one of the largest (non-EU) suppliers of wood to Europe. This is happening under the nose of the Polish authorities, often in the very center of Warsaw, near ministries and the Ukrainian embassy. Despite the sanctions imposed by Europe, both companies that have been operating for years and newly established ones are making money on imports from Russia and Belarus. Mariusz Sepioło, Konrad Szczygieł (), Šarūnas Černiauskas (Siena.lt/OCCRP), Alexander Yarashevich (Belarusian Investigative Center), Inese Liepiņa (Re:Baltica)įor the past year, individual businesses and entire industries have been escaping the embargo-and continuing to get rich from trading goods from across Poland’s eastern border. This article was originally published in Polish on
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