Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia

Money Logging investigates what Gordon Brown has called probably the biggest environmental crime of our times the massive destruction of the Borneo rainforest by Malaysian loggers. Historian and campaigner Lukas Straumann goes in search not only of the lost forests and the people who used to call them home, but also the network of criminals who have earned billions through illegal timber sales and corruption. Straumann singles out Abdul Taib Mahmud, current governor of the Malay¬sian state of Sarawak, as the kingpin of this Asian timber mafia. Taib s family with the complicity of global financial institutions have profited to the tune of 15 billion US dollars. Money Logging is a story of a people who have lost their ancient paradise to a wasteland of oil palm plantations, pollution, and corruption and how they hope to take it back. Translated from German.

Lukas Straumann is the executive director of the Bruno Manser Fund in Basel, Switzerland.