Malaysian timber companies operating overseas are among the world's most destructive and a moratorium on further investment should be declared, says a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report.

The much awaited report was released on June 9 amidst controversy over allegations of censorship of critical content within it.

Malaysian companies featured heavily among the firms condemned by the report for huge wastage of timber resources, widespread bribery and corruption and destructive "cut-and-run" logging.

"Investments have been concentrated in countries with generally weak or outdated environmental and social laws and little enforcement capacity," said the report.

Furthermore, the report notes that "Malaysian logging companies operating overseas have been involved in a number of corruption controversies in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Allegations of illegal logging and smuggling of logs have also been made."

The RM1.14 million report describes a new trend of unsustainable forestry investment conducted mostly by Asian companies in other Third World countries, and Malaysian timber companies account for more than 80 percent of such new South-South investment.

Among the largest Malaysian investors in tropical timber exports is Rimbunan Hijau.

Highly mobile capital has contributed to these investments being "effectively mining operations" which form a pattern of extraction followed by abandonment. Even basic principles of the sustainable forestry management practices, said the report, have not been implemented.

The report's authors Nigel Sizer, of the respected World Resources Institute in Washington DC, and Dominiek Plouvier, of WWF-Belgium, have called for a halt on further logging in the 11 countries studied.

These are Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Belize, Surinam, Guyana, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

Malaysian companies operate in almost all of these countries.

Report suppressed, names removed

The report, originally completed in 1997, attracted controversy recently after Britain's Guardian newspaper (May 29) alleged that it was suppressed for three years by its funder, the European Commission (EC), and WWF, over fears that it would appear "racial" as Asian companies were among the worst offenders.

The WWF also feared litigation since earlier versions had, according to the Guardian, "named companies prepared to bribe and bully their way to lucrative logging concessions".

A senior WWF source told BBC News Online (May 29): "Our main worry is that a number of the companies we were going to name are extremely litigious. They have dragged other environmental organisations through the courts.

"So names have had to be taken out, and things we might have liked to include have had to be omitted from the final draft," the source said.

The WWF was also apparently concerned that "some of the governments concerned, particularly Malaysia, would close down WWF offices."

However, when the Guardian article was published in The Star ("Delayed release for damaging report", June 13), the above reference to Malaysia was removed.

WWF Malaysia claimed that the "report was not deliberately delayed as claimed in the Guardian article. Further research had been necessary to update the report following the Asian economic crisis and to minimise the threat of litigation from some of the world's most powerful transnational companies."

The report in its present incarnation avoids any mention of Malaysian companies by name except in one instance when praise is made.

The report has welcomed recent moves by the Malaysian government to "curb the excesses of Malaysian transnational logging companies", particularly Minister of Primary Industries Lim Keng Yaik's demand in 1997 that industry executives respect the laws of host countries and not take advantage of "weak governments".

The report "Increased Investment and Trade by Transnational Logging Companies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific: Implications for the Sustainable Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests'" is available [#1] online[/#] (requires Adobe Reader).