All About Timber Trafficking

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME / 18 SEP 2020

Chihuahua is Mexico’s biggest state, and more than a fifth of its 25,000 hectares is forested, mostly with pine trees of the type that are harvested in vast quantities in…

ELITES AND CRIME / 18 SEP 2020

Catacamas is the largest municipality in Central America, home to thousands of square kilometers of pristine forest. Political elites in this remote part of Honduras have maintained a profitable relationship…

COLOMBIA / 18 SEP 2020

In Colombia, timber traders corrupted regulators to traffic untold amounts of timber.

COVID AND CRIME / 17 SEP 2020

Four Indigenous leaders in Peru's Amazon have been murdered since the government declared a state of emergency over COVID-19, revealing how their opposition to illegal logging, mining and drug trafficking…

BRAZIL / 8 JUL 2020

The abandonment of environmental fines for illegal deforestation in Brazil is leading to a political scandal, with a cabinet minister potentially being removed from office and state governments breaking with…

HUMAN RIGHTS / 7 APR 2020

A new report has found that 86 environmental activists have been killed in Mexico since 2012, with a third of the killings linked to energy projects -- an alarming fact…

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME / 26 AUG 2019

Illegal timber and drug trafficking are closely linked in northeastern Honduras, a major cocaine corridor in this region. There, criminal groups have savvily combined these two businesses to maximize their…

BOLIVIA / 29 JUL 2019

Officials within the agency entrusted with protecting Bolivia's forests falsified data and provided documents legitimizing the illegal harvesting of timber, a scheme that occurs throughout South America.

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME / 19 JUL 2019

A new report offering a detailed statistical breakdown of Peru’s timber trade exposes the staggering levels of illegality that have contaminated the country’s wood supply chain and the constant evolution…

COCAINE / 18 JUN 2019

Authorities in Peru say they have successfully driven illegal gold mining out of the Amazon, but will other illegal economies take its place?…

COLOMBIA / 28 MAY 2019

A park ranger’s shooting in Costa Rica and the slaying of another in a Colombian reserve show the dangers rangers face in protected areas -- as diverse in flora and…

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME / 10 MAY 2019

The mafia that makes trafficking of illegally-sourced wood possible in Peru is not made up of timber trade outlaws. It is a network of corrupt officials.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Rights Watch Draws on InSight Crime's Haiti Coverage

18 AUG 2023

Non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch relied on InSight Crime's coverage this week, citing six articles and one of our criminal profiles in its latest report on the humanitarian…