Illegal timber discovered under passenger bus.

(Baonghean.vn) - At 8:00 AM on January 6, 2015, during an inspection, the task force of the Mobile Forest Protection and Fire Prevention Team No. 1 of Nghe An discovered a large quantity of illegally smuggled timber in a sleeper bus, using sophisticated methods.

Earlier, at around 2 PM on January 5th, a task force from the Mobile Forest Protection and Fire Prevention Team No. 1 of Nghe An province ordered a vehicle with a Lao license plate to stop for inspection while traveling on Mai Hac De street in Vinh city.

The amount of rosewood and the truck carrying the wood are being held by the authorities.

Upon inspection, authorities discovered four sets of wooden doors and charcoal without permits. Further investigation led to suspicions that a sealed compartment beneath the truck bed might have been used to store wood.

When asked to bring the vehicle to the forest ranger station for clarification, the driver, Tran Ngoc Luong (43 years old), and the owner, Hoang Van Cong (36 years old), both residing in Dien Chau district (Nghe An province), were uncooperative, denied the forest rangers' suspicions, and used insulting language towards the authorities.

The forest rangers had to call the 113 emergency hotline of the Nghe An Provincial Police, the Vinh City traffic police, and the Nghe An Provincial Police for assistance.

Despite the presence of the inter-agency task force, the driver refused to take the vehicle to the forest ranger's headquarters. Driver Luong started the engine and sped away, but was chased and overtaken by the forest ranger's pickup truck, which blocked his path.

It took nearly three hours for forest rangers and police to escort the vehicle to the headquarters of Mobile Forest Ranger Team No. 1 and invite the Nghe An Economic Police (PC46) to come and draw up a report for processing.

This morning (January 6th), inter-agency forces drilled into the truck's cargo compartment and discovered a hidden stash containing hundreds of illegally logged logs. Upon inspection, authorities seized 570 kg of rosewood... without any documentation of origin.

A large quantity of rosewood was discovered and inspected by the authorities.

At the authorities' office, the vehicle owner, Hoang Van Cong, confessed that all the timber was purchased by him from Laos and brought to Vietnam for sale.

According to Mr. Ho Sy Trung, a legal inspector from Forest Protection Team No. 1 in Nghe An, the vehicle owner had cleverly designed a hidden compartment directly beneath the first-floor seating area, with a complex opening and closing mechanism.

The inter-agency task force has drawn up a record of administrative violations and temporarily seized the evidence and vehicles involved in the violations for processing according to current regulations.

Khanh Thanh