In the Irkutsk Region, a member of the Legislative Assembly illegally cuts down the taiga and sells timber to the IKEA company

IKEA used illegally cut Siberian trees to make children’s furniture. it should from an investigation by the conservation organization Earthsight. According to these data, the felling was carried out by the companies of the deputy of the Irkutsk Legislative Assembly Yevgeny Bakurov, who cut down healthy trees in Siberia under the pretext of sanitary felling.

This wood was shipped to China and Indonesia to IKEA suppliers. From there, the products were already distributed around the world through the IKEA chain of stores. Bakurov is one of the top 50 richest Russian officials.

From 2011 to 2020, five companies of the deputy cut down 2.16 million cubic meters of forest – experts estimated it at 18.5 billion rubles.

On June 7, Earthsight sent letters to the main suspects in the investigation, inviting them to comment on the violations. IKEA replied that the company itself had been analyzing supplies from Siberia for several months, including the chain in question, and decided to stop these purchases. On the IKEA website appeared a statement on a temporary ban on the use of timber obtained as a result of sanitary felling in Siberia and the Far East.

Prior to that, IKEA had already been accused of using timber illegally cut down in Ukrainian and Romanian forests.