Lumber Liquidators to pay $13.15 million for illegal wood imports

Lumber Liquidators was sentenced by a federal court in Norfolk, Va., on Monday to pay more than $13.15 million in criminal fines, community service and forfeited assets related to its illegal imports of hardwood flooring.    Lumber Liquidators was sentenced by a federal court in Norfolk, Va., on Monday to pay more than $13.15 million in criminal fines, community service and forfeited assets related to its illegal import of hardwood flooring.
   The company also agreed to five years of organizational probation and mandatory implementation of a government-approved environmental compliance plan and independent audits.  
   According to the Justice Department, much of the hardwood flooring was manufactured in China from timber illegally harvested in Far East Russia. 
   The penalty is the largest financial penalty for timber trafficking under the Lacey Act, according to the Justice Department.  
   “By knowingly and illegally sourcing timber from vulnerable forests in Asia and other parts of the world, Lumber Liquidators made American consumers unwittingly complicit in the ongoing destruction of some of the world’s last remaining intact forests,” said Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a statement.
   According to a joint statement of facts filed with the court, from 2010 to 2013, Lumber Liquidators repeatedly failed to comply with its internal procedures and to take action on self-identified “red flags.” 
   “Those red flags included imports from high-risk countries, imports of high-risk species, imports from suppliers who were unable to provide documentation of legal harvest and imports from suppliers who provided false information about their products. Despite internal warnings of risk and non-compliance, very little changed at Lumber Liquidators,” the Justice Department explained. “On other occasions, Lumber Liquidators falsely reported the species or harvest country of timber when it was imported into the United States.”