OSINT is unmasking the networks behind China’s billion-dollar trade in stolen trees.

“We don’t care what channels the materials come from, so long as they bring it over to China and declare the taxes.” – Wen Shuinian, owner of Munian Wood Company. [Source: EIA]

The Earth’s respiratory system is being stripped for profit. Every day, trees are felled from remote forests in Africa and Southeast Asia, and smuggled out from under the laws written to protect them. Their destination? The People's Republic of China.

This quiet flow of illegal timber into China is built on a scaffold of organized crime, shell companies, corrupt officials and armed militias. Left behind are devastated ecosystems and  suffering local communities, defrauded of their already-struggling countries’ natural wealth while Chinese businessmen reap billions of stolen dollars. Those responsible are hard to find, and that’s by design. Having butchered Southeast Asia’s rare hongmu (red wood) populations years ago, they’ve had to look elsewhere.

Since 2017, Mozambique has lost over 500,000 tonnes of timber a year to China, in violation of Mozambique’s explicit log export ban. This ban is intended to protect tropical forests that are both financially valuable and ecologically invaluable: logs that cost only a few Mozambican meticals will make tens of thousands of dollars in Beijing. Rosewoods like pau-preto or African Blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon), a precious ancient species listed as Near Threatened, are the most trafficked wildlife products worldwide, surpassing heartbreaking trades like ivory and pangolins. Pau-preto will end up sold as luxury goods by Hermes-founded and Exor-owned Shang Xia, or as fashionable replica Ming antiques wheeled out for display at the G20. 

“He said… If I sell the timber to him, I could become rich within a short period.” – Abou Rajdi,  a 40-year-old local woodcutter. [Source: OCCRP] 

Worse, a lot of hongmu is ‘conflict timber’. In areas like Cabo Delgado, forests are occupied (and sold) by Mozambique’s crushing al-Shabab Islamist insurgency. These insurgents target civilians, funding the “fuel and finance the reproduction of violence” with deforestation-for-profit. Mozambique’s National Risk Assessment on Terrorism Finance Report states al-Shabab’s massacres, beheadings, rapes and kidnappings rely on illicit timber sales for “a very high level of fundraising.” As villages are bombed and burned, Chinese buyers pay jihadists $1.9m a month. Other insurgent groups do the same, with ‘conflict timber’ funds allowing them to expand their operations and recruit. 

In Mali, Chinese businessmen had 5,500 containers of endangered kosso (Pterocarpus erinaceus) logs make their way to China between 2020 and 2022, equivalent to approximately 220,000 trees. In Nigeria, large-scale rosewood smuggling has seen permits and documents manipulated, with 20ft containers of logs exported daily despite laws and international CITES obligations - at the behest of Chinese buyers. Up-to-hundred-foot trees are chopped into equal 2m rectangles for easy transport. Gabon and Republic of Congo also have documented cases of overharvesting, logging beyond quotas, export of species not authorised for trade, and bribery to gain concessions. The Gambia is one of the five largest exporters of blood-red West African Rosewood (Pterocarpus erinaceus); it declared the species close to extinction almost a decade ago. 

“It’s all stolen and logged illegally. Over there, the environmental destruction is very bad. The mountains are completely mined out. It’s actually quite horrific.” – An anonymous Myanmar timber trader in Kachin. [Source: EIA]

Outside of West Africa, the butchery continues. At the Myanmar-China border (notably from Kachin State into Yunnan Province) a large-scale trade in vulnerable species such as Burmese teak (Tectona grandis) and rosewood continues even after Myanmar’s 2014 introduced a log export ban in April 2014. Taking advantage of the chaotic history of a border under complex ownership by various ethnic groups, China is wreaking devastation on one of the world’s previously most intact forests. Some species, like tamalan (Dalbergia oliveri/bariensis) and padauk trees (Pterocarpus macrocarpus), will be logged to commercial extinction in just three years. The country’s China-facing wholesale timber markets amount to an ecological graveyard.

One source dominates reporting of this ecological crisis: investigations by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an independent NGO that exposes environmental crime and corruption around the world. Through undercover investigations and painstaking analysis of these trades, EIA was the watchdog that revealed criminal networks, corrupt officials, and complicit businesses are choking the world’s lungs and destroying irreplaceable species. 

Their secret weapon in mapping these crimes? OSINT Industries.

Meet X*, Senior Intelligence Analyst for the EIA’s Intelligence and Investigations Unit.

“OSINT Industries… became my must-go-to site given its extensive coverage.”  – Senior Intelligence Analyst X, Environmental investigation Agency (EIA). [Source: OSINT Industries/EIA]

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) is a small but fearless nonprofit. Over more than four decades since its founding in 1984, EIA has grown from a group of undercover activists to disruptors of the world’s most ecologically dangerous (and often criminal) networks. EIA has continued to reveal that in the darkest corners of the world economy, both illegal and corporate interests are committing ecocide. Be it illegal logging in Africa and Southeast Asia or the smuggling of ivory, CFC refrigerants, and plastic waste, EIA are determined to act.

It’s persistence, bravery and solid evidence that have helped EIA trigger international bans, criminal prosecutions, and sweeping policy reforms, as well as exposing how corruption and organised crime underpin much of the global trade in global harms. In practical terms, “protecting the planet with intelligence” means blending covert investigations, meticulous research and OSINT. Mapping networks is critical not only for environmental protection, but also for cutting off the financial flows that sustain these criminal syndicates. 

This mission approach encounters specific hurdles. Eco-criminals prefer to stay unknown. For example, it’s thanks to bribery, inadequate oversight, and collusion that China maintains its steady supply of hongmu. Logging or export firms are usually shell companies, with functions spread across different jurisdictions and payments rerouted; mis-declaration of logs vs processed wood, falsification of permits, and manipulation of customs records are par for the course. Chinese companies will then bribe every step of the way: first forest authorities and local governments, then customs checkpoints. As is typical of all smuggling, the higher the value of the stolen wood, the greater the incentive to cheat and lie its way to its destination.

Luckily, this generates a paper trail of intelligence - that’s often open source.  

As an EIA senior intelligence analyst, Analyst X* is protecting the planet with OSINT on the daily. He recalls finding OSINT Industries when “one of our analysts heard about the tool through an old colleague working in the OSINT sector.” Now, his team of analysts in EIA’s Intelligence and Investigations Unit use our tool "almost daily”, especially with the phone number evidence that suspects often leave behind. 

When OSINT Industries proved to be key in EIA’s illegal timber trade investigations, Analyst X reached out to tell us how. Mapping the illegal timber passing between an undisclosed country and China, Analyst X and his team were facing a trade that seemed opaque. Key players - those X and his team needed to identify and expose - were concealed behind the aforementioned web of shell corps, companies, phone numbers and other digital shields. Could OSINT Industries make things clear?

‍Logging Digits: When a Number Becomes Evidence

“Identifying individuals behind emails and mobile numbers is usually the biggest challenge. Secondarily, these identifications sometimes also offer associated links that provide details on their activities that can be useful for our work.” – Investigator Z*, Environmental investigation Agency (EIA). [Source: OSINT Industries/EIA]

Conducting business requires contact information. Commonly, phone numbers will need to be exchanged. 

Analyst X had possession of supplier phone numbers that were involved in the hongmu trade. Chinese phone numbers have certain peculiarities that both complicate and facilitate OSINT for Westerners. All Chinese numbers are tied to a national ID system: you can’t get a SIM card without providing real-name identification. However, strict privacy laws and China’s closed digital ecosystem mean fewer data bridges overall, rendering most conventional OSINT tools useless. Chinese-language sources and Sinosphere social media platforms like QQ or Weibo will return fragmentary results if any, as most Western tools just don’t cover them. 

Analyst X found OSINT Industries is different. With OSINT Industries’ extensive slate of non-Western and China-focussed modules, hongmu supplier phone numbers became an extremely valuable resource. By running a search on each number, Analyst X and his team were able to not only identify Chinese buyers, but reveal their connections. When OSINT Industries searches uncovered QQ IDs or emails, triggering a further search allowed EIA analysts to cross-reference Chinese corporate records - identifying companies linked to suspicious individuals too. Each search provided proof that these individuals were involved in stripping precious wood species from the undisclosed country in question. Often, profile pictures on platforms like WhatsApp could put faces to guilty names.

“With more connections uncovered through OSINT Industries, we were able to analyse networks more precisely and pinpoint where to focus further investigation for the greatest impact…” – Analyst Q*, Environmental investigation Agency (EIA). [Source: OSINT Industries/EIA]

Analyst X admits that this particular investigation “wasn’t driven by a single ‘smoking gun’.” Yet, without OSINT Industries delivering "numerous incremental breakthroughs" many of these companies and individuals would have evaded mapping, and evaded the consequences of their actions. Certain Chinese companies - ‘usual suspects’ that had previously escaped EIA’s gaze - were now exposed. 

Eyes of the Forest: OSINT vs. Global Timber Crime

“It is the foundation of our work. Thorough OSINT work enables us to see as much of the picture as possible before getting into the field.” – Investigator Y*, Environmental investigation Agency (EIA). [Source: OSINT Industries/EIA]

According to EIA’s analysts, OSINT is proving vital in exposing the networks that drive environmental crime - and in helping EIA workers allocate their resources to make the most difference.

Analyst X recalls that before OSINT Industries, EIA would need to waste energy running searches on multiple platforms, including reverse phone searches and trawling messaging platforms. This took “a lot of time”, and analysts would often run into the barrier that “there are a limited number of searches for certain platforms without a (usually expensive) premium subscription.” OSINT Industries, meanwhile, offers access to aid non-profits in their work.

When investigating the illegal hongmu trade, Analyst X was facing the task of tracking suspects that used multiple phone numbers, encrypted messaging apps, and Chinese-language social media. This, he describes, created “fragmented digital footprints” that only a “unified”, capable tool like ours could investigate. 

‍“At the beginning, none of us dared to enter the forest because we thought there were deities living there. But now people are no longer afraid… if we don’t want the future generation die in hunger… to have the ‘sacred forest’ that can bless us, they must stop cutting trees.” – An anonymous indigenous leader, Casamance region of Senegal. [Source: Global Insight]

One of EIA’s best-known victories revealed how smugglers, manufacturers, and even government officials were undermining the Montreal Protocol with a black market in banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): the once-common refrigerant chemicals that eat away at the planet’s ozone layer. EIA’s findings helped push governments to tighten controls, and decades later, EIA continues to monitor and expose the illegal trade in newer CFCs. From the 80s to 00s, exposés like Blowing It revealed illegal CFC-11 production hidden within China’s foam industry, naming companies and tracing smuggling routes, without the speed and efficiency OSINT tools like ours provide. Today, EIA are doing the same for illegal logging. Since early 2024, EIA has been taking advantage of OSINT Industries free access for non-profit organisations. Losing that access, Analyst X feels, “would seriously curtail what we can achieve in our mapping of criminal networks and associations.” 

This trade is not unstoppable. Of the 33 woods classified as hongmu in China, 16 are endangered or approaching that point; all is not lost to stop this progress. That’s why OSINT Industries reaffirms its commitment to supporting NGOs like EIA, ensuring that cutting-edge digital tools can continue to help uncover hidden networks, expose corruption, and pressure those in power to defend the Earth’s precious lungs from destruction-for-profit.

To find out more about the Environmental Investigation Agency’s work, visit:

EIA Website

EIA Intelligence and Investigations Unit

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*Names have been changed to protect individuals.

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