As we reported, those containers were discovered yesterday evening at the compound of Belize Engineering - which is right next to Customs headquarters in Belize City. The Forestry Department, the CIB, Customs and BAHA responded to the information that the Rosewood was being held there - likely awaiting shipment. This is taken by the authorities to be a violation on the moratorium on Rosewood extraction and exportation because the hundreds of flitches had no official stamp from the Forestry Department. Additionally, customs had only released the containers at the end of 2012 - well after the moratorium went into effect.

And so, yesterday evening, Forestry quickly took both containers to Belmopan for safe storage. The other container that was discovered yesterday is a forty foot one with twenty-eight tons of rosewood flitches. That was found at the Belize-Guatemala Western Border. It was supposedly to be imported into Belize and then shipped out. But, authorities believe that the Rosewood originatd in Belize and was actually smuggled to the other side of the border - to make it seem like it was being imported. At any rate, Guatemala cannot export Rosewood in log form so that too is being held at the Western border.