$289 million per year. That is the average unexplained gap between timber export values declared by Cameroon and import values reported by global trade partners between 2013 and 2023.

In this premiere episode of The Shadow Files, Joshua T. Berglan unpacks official trade data from the Financial Transparency Coalition (Financial Secrets of the Forests). We examine how a peak single-year discrepancy of $327M in 2023, coupled with tax hikes jumping from 17.5% to 75%, has heavily incentivized product misclassification and supply chain opacity across trade routes to China, Vietnam, the EU, and the UK.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – $289M/Year Missing: The Scale of the Discrepancy
• 03:10 – Peak Gaps: Inside the 2023 $327M Trade Divergence
• 06:05 ...