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The PNG Forest Industries Association and the National Forests Board responded to the allegations by accusing the World Wildlife Federation, the EcoForestry Forum and other non-government organisations of being "puppets" of foreign countries, bent on securing more funding from the World Bank.
Deputy Prime Minister and Forests Minister Michael Ogio rejected suggestions that he favoured a Malaysian logging company with tax exemptions worth millions of kina.
Tomorrow night's Dateline documentary will allege bribery and corruption of government ministers and bureaucrats by logging companies, the recruitment by those companies of police as private law enforcers and of women being forced into sex at gunpoint.
On April 10, a World Bank independent review team, charged with cleaning up corruption in the forest industry, found that the PNG Forest Authority was "incompetent at almost every level of the forest management process".
It found that the authority had "grossly overstated" the extent of forest resources, had proved incapable of responding to or probing complaints on logging operations, had not attempted to protect conservation areas or fragile forests, had ignored statutory rules and was interested only in backing log exports.
The team found 11 of the 32 forest management agreements prepared for allocation -- covering 1.4 million hectares -- should probably not be continued because they were "illegal".
"There are numerous examples of outside influence and apparent fraud in the processing of the 32 concessions investigated by the review team," it said.
AAP
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