A federal judge sentenced Toano-based Lumber Liquidators on Monday to pay $10 million for illegally harvesting lumber.
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“The illegal cutting of Mongolian oak in far eastern Russian Federation is of particular concern because those forests are home to the last 450 wild Siberian tigers, Panthera tigris altaica”.
This includes criminal fines of $7.8 million, criminal forfeiture $969,175 and more than $1.23 million in community service. It will also pay about $3.2 million through a related civil forfeiture.
The company was hit with a revelation that some of its wood products sourced from China contained high levels of formaldehyde and another charge that it was importing wood products made from Mongolian oak, a violation of the Lacey Act, which forbids importing timber products made from materials protected by another country’s laws.
Lumber Liquidators will also be on probation for five years and it will have to implement a strict environmental compliance plan, the EIA said. “This company left a trail of corrupt transactions and habitat destruction. Now they will pay a price for this callous and careless pursuit of profit”, Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement.
A year ago was a bust for Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc.
“Lumber Liquidators is pleased to put this legacy issue behind us”, the company said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg News. Federal officials had accused the company of knowingly trafficking in Mongolian Oak from illegal sources and then lying about where the wood was harvested from.
A man walks past a Lumber Liquidators store, Thursday, March 12, 2015, in Philadelphia. The investigation revealed a prevalent practice in timber smuggling enterprises, where a company uses a seemingly legitimate government permit to log trees. The acorns of the Mongolian Oak are food source for the deer and wild boar the tigers survive on.
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In terms of community service contributions, money will go toward conservation nonprofits such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the USFWS Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund.
