It saddens us that the Council of Ethics has not given us fair hearing.

In December 2009, we received a Draft Recommendation from the Norwegian Government's Council of Ethics stating their intention to exclude us from the ‘investment universe' of their global Government Pension Fund. They gave us the right of reply.

In February 2010, we submitted our reply, after detailed investigation of our operations based on issues raised by Council's Report. In our findings, we noted that the Draft Recommendation was produced in its entirety with inputs from independent sources, anonymous sources, and NGOs known to have been systematically hostile towards the company. It also involved several breaches of security and confidentiality.

We regret that the Council did not engage us when the investigation began to give us a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process.

We recognize that learning is a continual process and given the Council's reputation and resources, we had sought insights and inputs from them. In our response, we also shed light onto several issues raised, while questioning the veracity of the Council of Ethics report and investigative methods. In addition, we also extended an invitation to the Council or its representative to visit our concessions for first-hand knowledge of our business and gain insight into issues raised by it. The initial invitation in February 2010 was subsequently followed by another invitation in July 2010. Unfortunately, there was no response to both our invitations.

The announcement by the Norwegian Finance Minister on 23 August 2010 sends out wrong messages about our logging operations.

Samling Global Limited is a public limited company governed by strict guidelines. It is sensitive to market sentiments and public perception, and we endeavour to safeguard our reputation.

It is also a long term player, having been in the industry for almost 40 years. Being one of the largest producers of tropical timber, Samling Global Limited is mindful that tropical forestry is constantly under immense scrutiny and recognizes that adopting best practices and certification standards in sustainable forest management is an evolving process for the country, industry and the company.

The company also operates in regulated environments, which requires compliance to its concession agreements that contain conditions enforced by the Sarawak Forest Department and Guyana Forestry Commission.

We stand by our record in sustainable forest management. We take pride in being the first tropical timber company in Malaysia with an ISO 9001:2000 quality management system certification. It was awarded in 2004, and since then, we have embraced the certification's obligatory culture of continuous improvement to our processes, initiating incremental process changes and corrective measures, when necessary."

samling.com