Sunseeker International and its US sales arm, Sunseeker USA Sales Co. Inc., have pleaded guilty to two Lacey Act violations in a Miami federal court, with the British luxury yacht manufacturer agreeing to a $200,000 fine and a compliance plan for Burmese teak imports linked to Myanmar’s sanctioned state-owned exporter. That is according to an announcement by the US Department of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD), which confirmed sentencing will take place on 20 August in the Southern District of Florida.
The plea relates to a teak balcony door intended for a yacht alongside teak parts incorporated into two further vessels priced at $2.98 million and $1.07 million, respectively, with the timber sourced from the same illegal supply chain that triggered the company’s 2023 UK conviction. Both the US and the UK have sanctioned the Myanma Timber Enterprise (MTE) — the sole authorised seller of export teak harvested in Myanmar — with US sanctions prohibiting any transaction by US persons involving property or interest in property tied to the entity.
US Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said the South Florida port system would not provide cover for trafficked timber, with the guilty plea following a US Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement investigation into the supply chain behind the implicated vessels. “Our ports are not open to illegal goods,” Reding Quiñones said.
Doug Ault, assistant director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement, said the agency was actively disrupting illegal timber supply chains under the Lacey Act and holding violators accountable for imports drawn from sanctioned jurisdictions. “Timber trafficking is a transnational crime that damages forests,” Ault said.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the ENRD said timber trafficking now ranks as the third most lucrative form of transnational crime globally, with the 2008 amendment to the Lacey Act giving US prosecutors the framework to disrupt the flow of illegally harvested wood into the American market. The US forest products industry loses approximately $500 million annually through depressed wood prices and lost export opportunities, according to ENRD figures released alongside the Sunseeker plea.
Sunseeker pleaded guilty in 2023 to UK Timber and Timber Products Regulations (UKTR) violations covering 11 illegal imports and was fined £360,000 in the first prosecution under the British framework, with the US case now confirming that the same Myanma Timber Enterprise consignments were re-exported from the UK into the American market. The British manufacturer builds its vessels in the UK and exports to international markets, with the implicated yachts identified in court papers and the Lacey Act admissions tied directly to imports drawn from the earlier UK proceedings.
It comes as Wood Central reported Myanmar authorities seized 84 tonnes of illegal timber in a single March week despite continued US and EU sanctions on the MTE, with the Environmental Investigation Agency and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists both documenting persistent teak flows into European and Asian markets through India, Indonesia and China since the February 2021 coup. The Sunseeker case follows a prior US Lacey Act prosecution that delivered 57-month prison sentences to a Miami couple over a $65 million plywood scheme using Russian timber processed through China, marking one of the harshest judgments in the law’s history.
Trial Attorney Emily R. Stone of the ENRD Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant US Attorney Daniel Rosenfeld for the Southern District of Florida are prosecuting the case, with Sunseeker due to be sentenced on 20 August on the agreed $200,000 fine and compliance plan.
