Indonesian billionaire household accused of controlling ‘shadow firm’ group linked to main deforestation

Former workers of a string of secretive firms accused of clearing swathes of Borneo rainforest declare the group is managed by Royal Golden Eagle, one of many world’s largest producers of wooden pulp and paper, a brand new investigation by ICIJ companion The Gecko Challenge and Bloomberg reveals.

RGE, which sells an array of merchandise to worldwide manufacturers, is owned by the Tanotos, a super-rich Indonesian enterprise household. Based on 9 former workers of Borneo Hijau Lestari, the alleged “shadow firm” group,  Anderson Tanoto, the son of RGE’s founder, oversaw the corporate himself, The Gecko Challenge reported.

Tanoto has been outspoken about sustainability and conservation at prime conferences, tackling subjects like biodiversity and renewable vitality at Davos, Cop26 and the G20 enterprise summit, The Gecko Challenge famous. In the meantime, BHL’s subsidiaries have reportedly ranked amongst Indonesia’s prime “deforesters” of pulp and paper.

Based on The Gecko Challenge, BHL’s homeowners use offshore secrecy jurisdictions, comparable to Samoa, to hide their identities. However seven of the 9 insiders — who labored at BHL and its subsidiaries between 2015 and 2024, and ranged from junior workers to managers — informed reporters that BHL’s actual homeowners have been the Tanoto household, citing managerial overlap and inner paperwork with RGE’s heading, and so they pointed to Anderson’s visits. Two others informed The Gecko Challenge they have been requested by managers to organize for a number of visits from Tanoto, who traveled by helicopter, between 2018 and 2023.

“That is actually, actually sturdy proof that RGE and BHL are related,” Syahrul Fitra, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace who reviewed the findings informed The Gecko Challenge. “Why else would an RGE boss, a high-level individual, come to a concession like that?”

The brand new investigation provides to a March report by Greenpeace and different environmental teams that alleged RGE had masked its ties to an Indonesian pulpwood firm, PT Mayawana Persada, accused of widespread destruction of forests and orangutan habitats.

One BHL subsidiary, Industrial Forest Plantation, is taken into account one in every of Indonesia’s prime offenders in the case of deforestation and has destroyed an space of forest roughly a 3rd of the scale of New York Metropolis since 2019, in accordance with deforestation monitoring consultancy TheTreeMap. 

In an announcement to The Gecko Challenge and Bloomberg, RGE denied the alleged relationship with BHL.

“RGE doesn’t function what you’ve claimed to be a shadow provide chain, and steadfastly upholds sustainability commitments throughout all firms within the RGE Group, significantly its no deforestation pledge,” RGE stated in an announcement.

The Gecko Challenge’s new reporting follows a sequence of investigations by ICIJ and its companions that exposed how companies often obscure connections to deforestation and environmental crimes. ICIJ’s Deforestation Inc. investigation, in collaboration with 43 media companions worldwide, uncovered flaws within the environmental auditing trade and certification applications supposed to advertise accountable forestry and different social objectives. 

In November 2023, The Gecko Challenge discovered that over the previous decade, main producers of palm oil, and pulp and paper merchandise have publicly touted sustainability objectives whereas establishing so-called  “shadow firms” that permit them to proceed destroying rainforests.

As a part of the cross-border investigation, The Gecko Challenge additionally revealed beforehand unknown hyperlinks between palm oil big First Assets, the billionaire household that owns it, and a trio of firms which have reportedly cleared extra forest for palm oil than some other agency in Southeast Asia. Eight worldwide manufacturers informed The Gecko Challenge they might cease supplying palm oil from the Singapore firm following the exposé.

Equally, Canadian, French and Indonesian reporters who labored on Deforestation Inc. documented hidden ties between Paper Excellence, one in every of North America’s largest pulp and paper firms, and Asia Pulp and Paper, a Chinese language-Indonesian forestry firm accused of environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

Each Paper Excellence, which not too long ago rebranded as Domtar, and First Assets have denied to ICIJ’s media companions that they’re linked to suppliers accused of environmental hurt.

The Gecko Challenge’s reporting on RGE’s alleged connection to First Assets sparked an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an trade physique, which remains to be ongoing. In the meantime, environmental teams, together with Greenpeace, have pushed again on RGE’s strikes to reassociate with the Forest Stewardship Council, the world-leading sustainability council, and referred to as on the Indonesian authorities to show all of RGE’s connections.

“The federal government must take critical motion,” Fitra informed The Gecko Challenge. “It’s one thing they’ll do proper now. RGE is attempting to cheat the system.”