Over 100 logs of luxury timber from Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary in Kampong Speu province were seized by authorities in Chbar Mon town on Tuesday.

Following an investigation, officers from the Forestry Administration and military police raided a home in Thmey village, where the load of Thnong logs was found, said Ti Munin, the provincial deputy prosecutor who led the crackdown.

The police were unable to identify the owner of the logs, but suggested that they were not the property of the home-owner, who had only been entrusted with their possession.

However, Chea Hean, director of the Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organisation in Kampong Speu, said that the timber had been logged from Phnom Oral and contradicted police’s claims about its ownership.

“No one left the timber with [the homeowner], he just said so in order to be punished lightly,” he said.

“Even if someone left [it] . . . he is guilty of being an accomplice in collecting or taking the forestry product illegally.”

According to a recent investigation by Hean, traders haul and sold timber of this kind in Vietnam for $2,000 per cubic metre.