A major logging company linked to the conglomerate responsible for destroying Indonesia's rainforests will buy another Canadian logging company within two weeks.
Shareholders of Resolute Forest Products — Canada's third largest timber producer — will choose to sell the company to British Columbia-based Paper Excellence for $3.7 billion.
Greenpeace's new analysis shows that Paper Excellence is actually part of the same group of companies as Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and the Sinar Mas Group, which are controlled and owned by the billion-dollar Chinese-Indonesian Wijaja family.
“We need more accountability and oversight when it comes to protecting forests,” said Priyanka Vital, legal counsel for Greenpeace Canada. "This report raises questions about who are the main drivers in Canada and what do we know about them? And how can we hold them accountable?"
According to a preliminary report by the Indonesian environmental agency Eyes on the Forest, APP cleared more than two million hectares of land for balsa wood and oil palm plantations in Indonesia's Ria and Jambi provinces between 1984 and 2010. endangered. More than 100 social conflicts and land disputes with indigenous peoples have occurred at logging sites owned by APP and Sinar Mas or supplying wood to APP mills, according to a Greenpeace report.
In In 2020, a paper released to the British Columbia government's Committee for Reviewing Old Growth Trees recommended "[ensure] that initial stock is available for harvest" and increased old growth reduction.
Greenpeace describes APP and Paper Emissions as "sister companies", both controlled by the Sinar Mas Group. The report cites family ties, management play, financial ties and lobbyist disclosures as evidence.
The owner of Pepper Excellence identified himself as Jackson Vijaya Leemanthara, whose father was the longtime chairman of APP and whose grandfather was the founder of the Sinar Mas Group, along with other close relatives, the report said.
A paper release disputed these results.
The company's vice president of corporate communications, Graham Kisack, told Greenpeace: "The release of the paper is completely independent of APP/Sinar Mas. Of course, Jackson Vijaya, the real owner of PE, is known to be the son of the current head of the company. APP/SMG. But Jackson has run PE completely independently." Advanced [...] is not owned or controlled by APP/Sinar Mas or anyone else.
Paper Excellence also acquired some of the largest US pulp and paper companies, including the world's largest pulp mill (in Brazil) and giant Domtar Corporation. Resolute Forest Products manages 20 million hectares of carbon-rich Canadian boreal forest, and if the sale is complete, Paper Excellence's total acquisitions over the past few years would be $8 billion.
In After Plain Lake bought the plant in 2007, the newspaper released six letters to the Saskatchewan government saying the plant was "part of the Synermas Group," the report said. In 2010, the company turned to letters that read "paper emissions," but the Greenpeace report found no evidence of a change in control or ownership of the company at that time.
This analysis is based on "hundreds of pages of publicly available business registration documents and other official documents relating to companies in Canada, Indonesia, France, Brazil, Italy, Germany, the United States, Malaysia, the British Virgin Islands and other jurisdictions." .
Paper Excellence maintains an unclear corporate structure - including companies in the Netherlands, British Virgin Islands, Labuan and Hong Kong - all known for their "extremely low corporate tax rates and secrecy", according to a Greenpeace report.
"It was not a deliberate attempt to withhold information," Vitale said, but because of that, "we were unable to determine who the ultimate beneficial owner was."
This makes it difficult to hold these companies accountable to the public, stakeholders, communities and indigenous peoples, he added.
"The release of the paper was never intended, and was never intended, to create a corporate structure that tries to hide anything," Kissack replied, pointing to issues outside the regulatory framework for corporate structure decisions.
Natasha Bulowsky, reporter for the Environmental Journalism Initiative, Canadian National columnist
