Gibson to pay $350,000 in penalties over illegal wood

from today's Nashville 'Tennessean"...

The TENNESSEAN is reporting that GIBSON GUITAR CORP. must pay a $300,000 fine and make a $50,000 community service payment to the NATIONAL FISH AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION as the result of earlier investigations by the U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE and the U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION.

These investigations concluded that GIBSON violated the LACEY ACT by illegally purchasing and importing Ebony wood from MADAGASCAR and Rosewood and Ebony from INDIA. GIBSON has also committed to implementation of a compliance program designed to strengthen their controls and procedures. GIBSON has furthermore agreed to withdraw its claims to $261,844 worth of wood that was seized throughout the investigation.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120806/NEWS/308060061/Gibson-pa...

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Permalink Reply by Hesh Breakstone on August 8, 2012 at 2:25pm

I have to tell you guys that many of you are a real pleasure to read your stuff on-line and I suspect that you are great people too!

Why would I say this? Because the very same news item on another forum has resulted in vicious claims that Holder and Obama stayed up late at night and conspired on ways to get ole Henry for his political leanings.... Over and over again someone will ask why was Taylor or Martin not targeted and invariably the consensus on the forum that I speak of is that it's purely political and just like the cost of gasoline Obama did it.....

Now please know that I am NOT attempting to get political here and that is why I love the posts of Rusty (I hope you don't mind me calling you Rusty), Mike, and Paul not to mention all of the posts in this thread.

As Luthiers one would think that this "passion" for the materials that we are privileged to access and work with translates easily into a profound and deeply held respect for our planet and environment. None of us wish to contribute to the endangerment of any species nor do we wish to harm our planet. This is what I wanna believe anyway....

Mike said: "The company's CEO political party affiliations, his sex life or what he had for breakfast yesterday have absolutely nothing to do with this particular case. A little focus here? He ran afoul of the Lacey Act, he got caught and now he's paying the prescribed price. A deeper read into the life and habits aren't necessary."

Bravo and this is the kind of thinking that I wished that many were capable of. And as evidenced by Henry now moderating his tune in the statement on Gibson's site, agreeing to pay the fine AND pay $50K toward community service too that Henry's money seems to be more important to Henry than the principals that he spoke of in the WSJ article claiming that he was being singled out....

It's true that I'm no fan of Henry's stewardship.... of Gibson either but at the end of the day as Mike said so very well Gibson broke the law and in my opinion the justice department is letting them off pretty easy when one understands that criminal prosecution was an option as well.

As for LACEY and CITES this stuff is very difficult to understand and many of us with legally purchased stashes are getting caught up in the middle here.... My understanding is that this fall an amendment will be offered to LACEY that may grandfather in the stashes of US based luthiers who can meet a standard of which I am not up on at the moment and life after this may be more understandable for us all in terms of regulatory compliance.

But again guys (meaning men and women) it's a sincere pleasure to see a discussion of CITES and/or LACEY as well as Gibson that has not devolved into accusations of falsification of a stinkin birth certificate..... As such when it comes to the regs that impact or potentially impact our industry it's getting easier to tell the Luthiers from the posers in so much as those of us who have this "passion" that Rusty described all so very well are going to automatically understand that this is not about politics but is very much about an effort, although very difficult to weed though.... to protect our earth's bounty that we in our businesses so heavily depend upon.

Paul said: "I heard that the Fed's were going to send it back to its country of origin BUT, the paperwork overwhelmed them!"

LOL! Yeah there is that too.... ;)

You guys made my day!