The NGO Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) suggests, in one of its reports, that a significant amount of teak from Myanmar was imported into the EU via Croatia from 2017 to 2019 without full evidence of legality. 10 loads with a total of 144 t teak worth at least US $ 1 million reached the port of Rijeka - presumably via China - and, according to the EIA, show inconsistencies in features such as the logging date, quantity, date of import and HS code. Viator Pula is said to have imported these on behalf of various European traders. The company was controlled by Croatian authorities in February 2020 and was asked to submit additional documents to comply with EUTR regulations. The deadline imposed by the Croatian Ministry of Agriculture to provide evidence of the legality by Viator Pula expires in August 2020. The report puts in doubt the validity of the work done by Double Helix in Myanmar for Viator Pula to verify the supply chain in the country. Further the EIA states that, since the FLEGT/EUTR expert group declared in December 2019 that “it is still not possible to come to a negligible risk of illegally harvested timber from MM [Myanmar]”, this has become the "common position” on Teak in Europe. Finally the report points out different standards among EU member states in the way in which EUTR is being controlled.

Fordaq contacted the CEO of Double Helix, Darren Thomas on these allegations. DoubleHelix claims to support the existing due diligence systems of EU operators, using experience since 2012 in Myanmar supply chains to provide specialist risk assessment and risk mitigation through independent supply chain audits and consignment-based verification. The focus is on the traceability of timber back to the exact origin of harvest, the production processes in the sawmills, and compliance with the laws in the country of origin - Myanmar. The company emphasizes that the risk of illegality is by no means underestimated. It acknowledges widespread issues of conflict, confiscated illegal timber re-sold in the market, and mixing of legal and illegal timber. But it insists that it is possible to identify controversial timber and exclude it before it is mixed into timber destined for export markets. "If you look at the foreign trade statistics from Forest Trends cited by the EIA, about two thirds of the teak imported into the EU by volume since 2017 has not been subject to any sort of verification or certification process" emphasizes DoubleHelix CEO Darren Thomas. "If there is a segment of trade that demands closer attention, it is those consignments with minimal documentation or verification, rather than those where some demonstrable effort of due diligence has been made." Extremely low prices of teak, currently reported in the market, would also be more likely to be associated with these unchecked deliveries.

Fordaq also contacted André De Boer, the former head of the European Timber Trade Federation. According to him the main argument of the FLEGT/EUTR expert group and other authorities that generally exclude Myanmar is the lack of transparency regarding the origin of wood. Until a few years ago, auditors were not allowed to inspect necessary documents. However, since the logging ban imposed in 2016/2017, this has no longer been the case, since access to various data relevant to the proof of legality is now available. "The FLEGT/EUTR expert group simply does not take this positive development into account", states de Boer. Myanmar's Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, Kyaw Zaw, also defends the competencies of the local authorities in the local medium The Irrawaddy.

Independently of the merits of the claims of the EIA it does put on the table again 2 important questions: namely the difficulty of tropical timber operators to understand the fast evolving and sometimes unclear requirements of national EUTR control authorities and the question of double standards within the EU.