Ghana’s former Lands Minister, Inusah Fuseini, acknowledged that despite the ban on rosewood exports that he imposed when he was in office, large quantities of the precious timber are being smuggled to China, but he just doesn’t seem to know how traffickers are getting away with it.
“Ever since I announced that the harvesting and exporting of rosewood is banned until further notice, no Minister has lifted the ban,” he said on Wednesday, “but we also know that export records received in China indicated that rosewood was exported from Ghana in spite of the ban. The question is, how did it leave the shores?”