It had been reported that a state-owned Chinese company had approached the Indonesian government for permission to create a factory in Papua to process 800,000m3 of merbau for the Olympics.
But the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) said that investigations by the government agency responsible for supervising the construction of Olympic venues found that none of the venues was using or will use virgin timber from Indonesia – or indeed that any wood products were being procured from Indonesia.
With one of the main themes of the 2008 Games being “Green Olympics”, BOCOG said it took the allegations seriously.
