Rosewood exports to Vietnam achieved with fake signatures: official
housands of cubic metres of endangered Siamese rosewood were sent to Vietnam in 2014 with export permits bearing the Photoshopped signature of a retired Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) secretary of state, a ministry official said yesterday.
The trade in Siamese rosewood was internationally outlawed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 2013. The next year, in spite of the ban, nearly a million cubic metres were registered in the database of the CITES secretariat in Geneva as having been exported to Vietnam from Cambodia in six batches.
