Guinea’s Minister of Justice has ordered legal proceedings against four government officials over an alleged illegal export of hundreds of containers of critically endangered West African rosewood to China,said a note addressed to the Guinean Attorney General.

The government of the West African nation of Gambia on Friday revoked with immediate effect all timber export licenses and banned the felling and import of Pterocarpus erinaceus, known as African rosewood. Experts remain skeptical about how effective this ban will be.

In an unprecedented move, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) asked its members to suspend trade in West African rosewood, whose stocks, falling victim to the surging demand in China, have been critically depleted over the past decade.

China’s rosewood imports from Mali, one of its leading rosewood suppliers, have led to the devastation of Malian forests and served as a conduit for ivory smuggling, says a newreport by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

High demand for West Africa’s rosewood timber, specifically from Chinese markets, has spawned corruption across the region’s forestry sectors, siphoned millions out of its economies, and accelerated the effects of deforestation and forest degradation.

Madagascar’s new business proposal for ridding itself of its vast stockpiles of illegally-harvested rosewood was met with a resounding “no” from a committee that regulates world trade in endangered species, because the proposal involved paying off local timber barons.