Corruption killing Bangladesh forests: watchdog

Yahoo News 18 Aug 08;

Bangladesh's jungles, including the world's largest mangrove forest the Sunderbans, are being destroyed because of rampant corruption in the nation's forest department, a graft watchdog said Monday.

Transparency International (TI) said in its report that forest officials were engaged in illegal logging worth millions of dollars a year.

Bribery was most evident in the appointment process for top-level jobs. Over the past two decades, forest chiefs have been chosen through an auction system in which the person who paid the biggest bribe landed the job, TI said.

The local branch of the Berlin-based watchdog conducted a 16-month investigation into Bangladesh's forest department. Lead investigator Manzoor-e-Khuda told AFP it was among the most corrupt in the graft-ridden country.

"Corruption is everywhere in the department and it's threatening the future of our forests. Our biodiversity is now at stake because of corrupt practices," he said.

"The post of the chief conservator forest (CCF) has been auctioned off regularly in the past 20 to 25 years. The immediate past CCF (Mohammad Osman Gani) gave an 11 million taka (161,000 dollars) bribe to get the post," the report said.

In March 2007, armed forces raided the home of the country's then chief conservator of forests Gani and found local currency worth 142,000 dollars stashed throughout his house, including in pillows, under his mattress and in a rice barrel.

His arrest was part of the emergency government's nationwide crackdown on corruption and he was sentenced to seven years in jail.

About a dozen top forestry officials have been detained since then on corruption charges.

TI said Bangladesh was losing 37,700 hectares (93,150 acres) of its forest each year, largely due to illegal logging, up sharply from 8,000 hectares in the 1980s.