About 28 tonnes of Burma padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) precious wooden planks, worth about 14 million baht, were seized from a Chinese-owned warehouse in Nong Khai province today, in a raid by park, Department of Special Investigation, customs and police officials.
Atthaphon Charoenchansa, director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plants, told the media that the seizure of the precious wood, from a storage facility operated by Choen Tai International Company in Muang district of Nong Khai, was the result an extensive investigation and follows a previous seizure in the northern region.
He said that the timber had been cut illegally from national forest reserves in northern provinces and smuggled on pickup trucks to the warehouse in Nong Khai.
Then, the timber was to be loaded into containers and trucked to Laem Chabang deep-sea port in Chon Buri, for shipping to Vietnam or China, which are major markets for expensive wooden furniture.
