Brazilian environmental bureaucrats have been raping the rainforest in Mato Grosso for 15 years by greasing the skids for a criminal gang engaged in lucrative illegal logging of protected lands, according to police. BBC reports:

This was the biggest ever police operation in the Amazon. It focused on the state of Mato Grosso, which last year accounted for nearly half of all deforestation.

What officers appear to have uncovered is a vast criminal network in which illegal loggers worked in partnership with corrupt officials. Starting in 1990, the loggers extracted nearly two million cubic metres of timber from the rain forest - enough to fill 76,000 lorries.

The bureaucrats who worked for the state branch of the government's environment agency, Ibama, are alleged to have supplied false transport permits so the wood could be sold both in Brazil and abroad. The accused include the executive director of Ibama in Mato Grosso, Hugo Jose Scheuer Werle, and one of the agency's senior directors in Brasilia.

...These operations...suggest a shocking level of corruption. In this case, the alleged criminals include people whose job it was to protect the rain forest.

I'm waiting for Sting to comment.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 2, 2005 09:40 PM