York Timber appeals court ruling
Forest products manufacturers York Timber will appear in the Nelspruit Magistrates Court on Monday, 29 April to appeal a R450 000 confiscation order granted against the company.
The judgement, made last week at the same court, was labelled as “ground-breaking” by both government officials and environmentalists.
The court granted a confiscation order of R450 000 against York Timbers after the company pleaded guilty in 2011 of widening a forest road on its premises in Sabie without acquiring authorisation.
This was reportedly in an attempt to deliberately avoid costs associated with environmental impact assessment procedures.
York Timbers defence lawyer, Richard Spoor, said that there was no justification for the sentence imposed on the company by magistrate Nomaswazi Shabangu.
“The confiscation order granted by Shabangu is unjustified. The order is completely wrong and the claim that we benefited from the widening of the road is untrue,” said Spoor.
The R450 000 was, according to a press release issued by the South African government, the sum that York Timbers saved by taking part in the illegal activity. The action was reportedly in contravention of the National Environmental Act of 1998 (NEMA) and the Prevention of Organised Crime Act of 1998 (POCA).
“York Timbers failed to employ the services of an environmental assessment practitioner and obtain environmental authorisation from the relevant authorities,” the press release stated.
Spoor claimed that York had applied for an environmental impact assessment to be carried out, but that the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) had turned the request down.
After the ruling, the company also applied for the “rectification of unlawful commencement of listed activities” as provided for in Section 24G of NEMA. The court did not grant the rectification.
During the trial at the Nelspruit Regional Court, Senior State Advocate Kobus van der Walt, of the National Prosecuting Authority Asset Forfeiture Unit, compared York’s activities to the more well-known crime of tax evasion.
“In both circumstances, there is a deliberate avoidance of a legal requirement. The financial benefit sought by York Timbers was the monetary savings it achieved by avoiding costs needed to comply with statutory environmental regulations,” said van der Walt.
“We were not grading this road for the benefit of ourselves, but rather for the citizens of Sabie. A flood washed away the original transport route to our sawmill in Sabie, so we had to begin running logs through the town. This upset residents so we decided to rebuild our original transport route,” said Spoor.
Albi Modise, DEAT spokesperson, said the ruling was “ground-breaking” and would set a precedent for other such cases.
“This type of ruling is the first of its kind and a ground-breaking one, and we hope that it will set a precedent for future cases,” said Modise.
Mpumalanga’s Economic Development, Environment and Tourism MEC, Yvonne Phosa also welcomed the penalty given to York Timbers.
“This is the first successful application for such an order relating to a contravention of environmental impact assessment legislation in South Africa. We welcome the judgment and penalties imposed on the company, and we believe that this would serve as a lesson to others who believe that they can infringe the environmental laws of this country, hoping that they will subsequently correct this by applying through Section 24G of NEMA,” explained MEC Phosa. – The Write News Agency