Estonia leads EU crackdown on suspected Russian timber laundered through third countries
Estonia’s success in slashing plywood imports from China by more than tenfold and reducing shipments from Kazakhstan by 20% through intensified customs inspections stands out amid inconsistent EU-wide enforcement against suspected Russian timber circumvention.
The Estonian Tax and Customs Board announced this week it intensified customs checks on plywood from China and Kazakhstan in February, after identifying ‘a significant increase in plywood imports’ from both countries at the end of 2024, Deputy Director General for Customs Ursula Riimaa said.
These controls had a deterrent effect, the Customs Board said: ‘Plywood imports from Kazakhstan dropped by approximately 20%, while imports from China decreased more than tenfold.’
Riimaa said factories had been identified in Kazakhstan that falsify the origin of plywood destined for the EU, noting that Estonia has initiated over 100 proceedings for origin fraud related to customs declarations concerning timber shipments from Kazakhstan.
The intensified campaign comes as Russian timber companies use increasingly sophisticated methods to evade EU sanctions through third countries.
The European Union imposed a full ban on Russian timber imports in July 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite the ban, investigations have revealed that Russian timber has continued to enter the EU through indirect routes—often laundered via third countries like China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and others.
‘High-value birch plywood manufactured in Russian factories is funnelled into the EU in broad daylight through third countries, accompanied by a new set of documents to hide the real origin of goods,’ said Tara Ganesh, head of timber investigations at Earthsight, a London-based NGO. ‘Firms in the laundering routes for Russian wood like China, Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan are complicit in the laundering and take a cut of the sales in exchange for pretending products are manufactured there.’
Estonia conducted 618 timber shipment inspections in 2025, identifying 23 violations and turning back 79 shipments immediately at the border, while 39 additional timber shipments were returned from within Estonia after further origin verification revealed Russia as the actual source.
As the EU market remains largely closed to Russian businesses, efforts to bring sanctioned goods into the EU continue, said Riimaa, explaining that while traditional smuggling used to be simple, these days ‘supply chains are far more complex – production is moved to third countries, and raw materials are mixed to conceal their Russian origin’.
Estonian authorities have flagged Kazakhstan, China, Georgia, and Turkey as high-risk sources for wood products and have put strict controls in place across all types of wood imports.
Estonia and its Baltic partners Latvia and Lithuania stand out as the most fervent supporters of sanctions against Russia inside the EU. All three have banned the transfer and temporary storage of timber. They also prohibit vehicle swapping in Russia when importing plywood and other wood goods from third countries, aiming to reduce the risk of fraud related to the true origin of the products.
Ganesh noted that sanctions evasion operations are sophisticated, with presumably some ‘collusion by local authorities in the third countries’. She explained that some firms are even ready to provide a sustainability label valued by EU industry with shipments, ‘which makes imports seem more legitimate to authorities even when they are not’.
In Finland, located across the Gulf of Finland from Estonia, EU timber sanctions have created severe economic disruption for companies that previously relied heavily on Russian wood.
According to Bank of Finland economist Heli Simola, Russia accounted for 70% of Finland’s roundwood imports in 2021 and represented 12% of the wood supply for Finnish forest industries before imports ended in spring 2022. Writing for the bank, she said Finnish companies had only managed to replace less than half of pre-2019 import volumes by end 2023, with replacement timber costing significantly more than Russian supplies that were sometimes a fraction of the price.
Against this backdrop of supply shortages and higher costs, Finnish companies now face serious consequences for timber sanctions violations.
Aleksi Pursiainen, founder and CEO of Solid Plan Consulting in Helsinki, explained that since the EU Sanctions Crime Directive in May significantly tightened enforcement around sanctions violations, corporate fines can climb as high as €40 million, equivalent to $46 million. The most serious violations could mean five-year prison terms, he said.
Pursiainen sad regulators in Finland have been firm that they expect all companies involved in international trade to implement effective, risk-based measures to comply with EU sanctions. For timber importing companies, he said, this means they must actively seek to ensure their timber does not originate from Russia.
‘Finnish companies that fail to take sanctions compliance seriously are exposed not only the threat of criminal liability, but also to a range of other very serious risks,’ he warned, explaining that the vast majority of Finnish society and Finnish business are strongly pro-Ukraine and pro-sanctions, and that companies seen to have acted irresponsibly face significant reputational and commercial risks even if they avoid criminal liability.
Ganesh said enforcement remains inconsistent across the EU. However, she noted some progress: ‘Poland has done a fantastic job of cracking down on conflict wood imports in recent months, many others have too. But yet others are lagging behind- Bulgaria, Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Portugal.’
Last month, when the EU imposed its latest sanctions package against Russia, those five countries requested carve-outs from the EU Deforestation Regulation, which is designed to block imports of illegal or conflict-linked wood.
An Earthsight investigation in January found that since sanctions took effect in July 2022, timber worth over €1.5 billion had still been laundered into the EU, with an estimated twenty container loads arriving daily.
‘We need criminal cases and a coordinated enforcement response so there are no chinks in EU borders for conflict ply to slip through,’ said Ganesh. ‘That has not happened yet.’
