Policemen found the body late in the evening in a secluded wooded area. The killers had thrown the man down a slope, his service rifle lay beside him. His upper body had several gunshot wounds and numerous hematomas on, one foot was shattered, later forensic scientists still found several rib fractures. Investigators spoke of "extreme violence" with which the crime was committed.
The dead was Liviu Pop. He was a forester in the northern Romanian district of Maramuresh. The father of the family lived with his wife and three small daughters in the village of Borcut near the small town of Targu Lapus. On the afternoon of October 16, he patrolled a mountainous forest in the Rogoz Valley, about ten kilometers northeast of his home village. At 6:41 pm he called his wife and told her he had caught wood thieves. It was his last sign of life. Liviu Pop was 37 years old.
Slain with an ax
A few weeks earlier another ranger had already been murdered in the north-eastern Romanian district of Iasi: Raducu Gorcioia. The 50-year-old was killed on 13 September with an ax - by wood thieves, which he had caught red-handed.
The cruel murders of the two foresters are currently shaking the Romanian public. The media reports almost daily about the "Holzmafia" and their crimes. For the umpteenth time in recent weeks hundreds of forest workers with crosses and coffins bearing the names of dead colleagues demonstrated in Romania's capital Bucharest and demanded better protection.
imago / EST & OST
Clearcutting: logging in Romania
Foresters live dangerously in Romania: According to the umbrella organization of the Romanian Forestry Workers' Union (Consilva), six foresters have been murdered in recent years. In about 650 cases, forestry workers were victims of violent attacks during their professional life and suffered bodily harm.
Cheap furniture for Ikea
It's not just deeds of petty criminals or poor villagers looting the forests because they have no money to buy firewood. For years Romania has systematically cleared away its once extensive forests. The timber trade is a billion dollar business. The ramifications reach into the highest political circles. Millions of cubic meters of wood are illegally beaten. Who disturbs this business, may risk his life.
SPIEGEL TV on the clear-cut in Europe's last primeval forests:
MIRROR TV
The systematic clear-cut is mainly driven by the great demand from abroad: Romania is one of the largest timber exporters in Europe. The Austrian timber companies Schweighofer, Kronospan and Egger have built plants with large processing capacities in Romania, and Germany is one of the buyers of their products. But Romania is also an important source of raw materials for the furniture giant IKEA. Numerous domestic companies produce cheap products for the Swedish group, the company itself owns about 50,000 hectares of forest in Romania.
The extent of illegal logging is even worse than feared
After environmentalists uncovered in the spring of 2015 that the Schweighofer Group had systematically bought up illegally harvested timber, not only the Austrian company and other wood processors came under pressure, but also the Romanian state. For the mass forest return to former owners, corruption, lax controls and loopholes in the law made it possible to exploit the forests.
Both Schweighofer and the Romanian government promised improvement at the time. Among other things, GPS-based tracking systems should prevent illegal clearcutting. But little has changed since then. On the contrary. The full extent of forest clearing in Romania has only recently become apparent when the Romanian Investigative Portal Recorder published previously secret statistical data on annual logging since 2010.
imago / EST & OST
Logging for the sawmill Radauti of the Austrian company Schweighofer
They were raised by the scientific working group "National Forest Inventory" (IFN), which works on behalf of the Ministry of Water and Forests (MAP). According to the data, around 38 million cubic meters of wood are harvested every year in Romania, but officially only around 18 million cubic meters are declared. The IFN director Gheorghe Marin confirmed the SPIEGEL the numbers of the survey. Marin did not comment on why the Ministry of Water and Forests (MAP) kept the details of actual logging under wraps. The ministry left an inquiry of the SPIEGEL unanswered.
Did the forester shoot himself?
The police investigation into the case of the murdered forester Liviu Pop meanwhile far from transparent: The day after the murder, the police interrogated three alleged perpetrators. The men admitted to having met the forester in the forest on the evening of his death. But they only collected dry wood lying around, they said. The forester accidentally shot himself with his rifle. By the bang her horse had panicked and started, the horse car had rolled over the forester and smashed his foot.
The three suspects were released. Without further justification. It is only known: One of the alleged perpetrators is the nephew of a senior prosecutor in the district of Maramures.
