A formal complaint to the attorney general alleges approximately 450 containers of prohibited timber left the Port of Pemba with forged documentation, naming the very minister and forestry director responsible for stopping it.
By Foreign Correspondent
In Pemba, the port city that serves as Cabo Delgado’s gateway to the Indian Ocean, approximately 450 containers of prohibited timber left the docks. Only 44 met legal documentation standards.
The remaining 406 shipped out without valid customs declarations, full tax payments, or proper exit authorizations, according to a formal complaint filed with the attorney general of Mozambique.
The estimated loss to the state: 200 million meticais, roughly $3.1 million.
The complaint names not only two private companies and two individuals, but three senior government officials: Roberto Mito Albino, the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries; Imede Falume, the National Director of Forests; and Stélio Gonçalves, the Director of Investigation at the Tax Authority.
These are the officials responsible for enforcing the laws they are accused of helping to circumvent.
This case represents the latest chapter in a systemic crisis. Despite a log export ban in effect since 2017 and expanded to all species in December 2023, Mozambique continues to hemorrhage timber, revenue, and forest cover.
The country now faces the threat of international sanctions from CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty, for failing to control exports of endangered species.
The complaint cross-references bills of lading, shipping manifests, exit authorizations, and container lists.
It identifies Romaca Unipessoal, Lda, and S&M Serviços, Lda, as the companies behind the shipments. Romaca is a certified timber exporter holding export certificate 06/MTA/2022.
The cargo included raw logs, processed timber, and species potentially classified as restricted or prohibited.
Under Mozambican law, the export of raw logs of any species is banned. High-demand hardwoods, including jambire, umbila, and chanfuta, have been banned from export in any form since 2018.
All three are now listed on CITES Appendix II.
The complaint notes that the actors involved were “allegedly held legally responsible around 2022 for similar practices.”
This pattern of repeat offending is consistent with findings by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which documented how networks of Chinese traders and Mozambican intermediaries operate across cycles of seizure, prosecution, and resumption.
The inclusion of Minister Roberto Mito Albino resonates with separate proceedings already underway.
In September 2025, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a leading Mozambican watchdog, reported that the Sofala Provincial Court charged Albino with ordering illegal timber extraction in Chemba district.
The district prosecutor confirmed he held a provisional land use right but no logging license. The charges carry a prison term of 12 to 16 years.
The CIP investigation revealed that one week before the scheduled trial in July 2025, Albino dismissed Ermelinda Maquenze, the Sofala director of environmental services, who had ordered the seizure and initiated criminal proceedings. Prosecutors reported they could not reach the minister by phone.
The same minister publicly suspended the export license of Safi Timber in August 2025 after “serious discrepancies” in inspection reports, drawing praise from the Mozambican Federation of Timber Operators.
He also met the FAO Director General in Rome in July 2025 to discuss sustainable agriculture. No public response from the minister regarding the Pemba complaint was found in the cited record.
Imede Falume’s trajectory follows a parallel arc.
The Savana newspaper reported in July 2025 that Falume, reappointed in May 2025, had previously signed Authorization No. 2065, which allowed timber transport without payment of mandatory cutting fees. Internal whistleblowers alleged the authorization benefited Falume’s personal circle.
Under his earlier tenure from 2020 to 2022, more than 76 containers of timber vanished from government custody at Pemba, a scandal that preceded his quiet removal.
Savana further reported that Falume’s cousin, Yssene Idrisse, operates a timber company that received unauthorized quota increases approved by Falume himself.
A family-owned logistics company, Sunnat Logistics, in which Falume’s children hold 70% of shares, transported the timber along known smuggling routes through Cabo Delgado.
No public response from Falume was found in the cited record.
Over 90% of Mozambique’s timber exports go to China.
Between 2017 and 2023, according to the EIA, 89% of timber shipped from Mozambique to China, equivalent to 3.7 million tons valued at $1.3 billion, breached the national log export ban. An estimated 65% of timber shipments leaving Pemba port violate at least one restriction.
China’s demand for hongmu luxury furniture drives the trade. Mozambique became China’s top African supplier of rosewood in 2023, shipping over 20,000 metric tons. Much of this is pau-preto, or African blackwood, listed on CITES Appendix II since 2017.
No valid non-detriment finding, the scientific study required before any CITES-listed species can be exported, has been completed in Mozambique. Every shipment of pau-preto therefore violates the international treaty by default.
Major shipping lines, including CMA-CGM, Maersk, and MSC, have carried these cargoes. The feeder line UAFL, the only container service calling at Pemba, has been particularly exposed.
In August 2020, over 80 containers on a UAFL vessel were seized for holding banned species. After seizure, the containers were smuggled back out on another UAFL vessel.
Mozambique loses an estimated $500 million to $700 million per year to illegal logging, according to successive environment ministers. Forest cover declined from 88% in 1980 to 43% in 2020, with approximately 267,000 hectares disappearing annually.
In Cabo Delgado, the destruction intersects with armed conflict. The EIA found that 30% of timber logged in the province carries a high risk of originating from insurgency-occupied forests.
The government’s National Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment estimates timber smuggling generates approximately $2 million per month for Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jamaah insurgents.
In Montepuez district, community members told the Space for Giants conservation organization that logging companies routinely rent licenses to unauthorized corporations that do not replant, accelerating devastation of forests their families have depended on for generations.
In July 2025, CITES authorities warned Mozambique could face a ban from international trade in endangered forest species unless it demonstrates progress on enforcement.
Ernesto Witimane Júnior, from Eduardo Mondlane University’s Forestry Department, stated, “The uncontrolled export of pau-preto threatens biodiversity and represents a major fiscal loss that could otherwise support national development.”
In November 2025, parliament unanimously passed a bill to ban all log exports outright, closing loopholes in the 2010 surcharge law. The National Directorate of Forests launched a digital licensing platform in mid-2025 to automate monitoring.
And a Sofala court ruling on 111 detained containers showed how judicial oversight can distinguish legal processed timber from illegal raw logs.
But reform requires confronting a structural problem: the officials charged with enforcement are themselves implicated.
Until the Attorney General acts on the evidence in this complaint and others like it, the cycle of seizure, disappearance, and re-export will continue.
“These are resources protected by legislation and policy so that they can benefit the people of Mozambique,” a current Cabo Delgado official told EIA investigators. “All these schemes are cheating the country.”
