ParksWatch was present with the National Police when the timber was stopped along the Yavarí Mirín River. This photo shows timbers and logs ready for transport. Photo ParksWatch 2004.
INRENA agents in Loreto unhappy with Judge Juan Humberto Vásquez Laguna’s decision. On October 27, 2004 Mariscal Castilla Province Judge declared that the timber company’s (Empresa Maderera Barrios SRL) petition was admissible and accepted. As a result of this decision, the judge ordered INRENA to return 1,100 cedar logs to the company. INRENA, police stationed at Carolina Border Station, and the ecological police had confiscated the logs from the Mirín River (a tributary of Yavarí River) because the company did not have appropriate documentation to extract, remove, transform, or sell the timber.
This judge’s decision came just two days before Administrative Resolution Number 157-2004-PJ/CSJLO-P was signed. In this resolution, the President of the Supreme Court of Justice of Loreto named Judge Caballo Cocha as Paz Letrado’s Deputy Judge in the District of Belén.
The timber was valued at 1,125,000 Soles. After considering production and transportation costs, the estimated net profit is 675,000 Soles—profit from illegal logging that occurred on May 13, 2004. On that day, the National Police stationed at Carolina Border Station confiscated the first 850 logs. This was only six days after Loreto’s Ad Hoc Forestry Concession Commission announced the results of the Public Competition for the Forestry Use Concession Units.
However, the timber company states that 1,042,263 m3 of cedar came from their forestry concession plots 357, 369, 370 and 371. Without any verification, the Judge ruled in their favor, thereby presuming that along all of Yavarvi, cedar is only found in those particular concessions.
This is inexplicable because the concession contract was signed with the company recently, June 30, 2004—that is, 54 days after the timber was confiscated by the National Police and well after the wood was marked, cut, dragged, floated, and transported.
The company Empresa Maderera Barrios SRL bases its petition on Article 179, Clause 17 of its contract with INRENA that says, “The Concessionary receives the timber and non timber resources within its concession area that have been confiscated from third-parties per Article 379 of the Forestry and Wildlife Regulations approved by Supreme Decree Number 014-2001-AG and the corresponding directives.”
Apparently, the third-party who at the moment of the timber confiscation in Islandia did not participate the Intervention Act (Number 001-04-INRENA-IFFS/SI) is Mr. Jaime Becerra Reátegui. The National Police at the Carolina Station intervened Mr. Becerra Reátegui’s boat “Alexander,” license number IQ-008400, owned by Mr. Fernando Chamorro Peña.
Their respective statements signed by Becerra Reátegui and Chamorro Peña says that the timber did not come from third-party loggers as the timber company and the Judge claim, rather that the timber came from concession C-J-057-04. This shows that the illegal logger in this case was the timber company itself—yet the judged ruled in their favor.
This news report was taken from Diario Pro & Contra, Iquitos, November 3, 2004
ParksWatch – Peru: December, 2004