The State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has announced “tough personnel purges at all levels,” the company’s CEO Yuriy Bolokhovets said on Facebook.
“Throughout the year, the security of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” recorded the facts of violations, collected information, conducted internal investigations, and passed materials to law enforcement. It was a huge job that took time. But there is a real result,” he wrote and added that the details of the investigation have not yet been disclosed.
As reported, the state specialized economic enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” is one of the largest forest users in Europe and the largest forest user in Ukraine. It is managed by the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine. The company manages 6.6 million hectares of state forest land.
In 2016, Ukraine launched a forestry reform. It has already introduced the sale of unprocessed timber at electronic auctions. Since 2021, an interactive map of wood processing facilities has been operating in a test mode in a number of regions.
The industry has implemented the Forest in a Smartphone project, which contains a list of logging tickets for timber harvesting and allows you to check the legality of logging on the agency’s online map.
On June 1, 2023, Ukraine launched a pilot for the electronic issuance of logging tickets and certificates of origin for timber.
In addition, to combat corruption within the state enterprise, the management of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” has implemented a pilot project on GPS monitoring of the movement of freight and specialized vehicles in forests to improve the electronic timber circulation system (ETS).
