Top: Some of the logs that Sing Africa likely illegally harvested in the Bluyeama Community Forest in its sawmill in Zorzor, Lofa County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue

By James Harding Giahyue

Editor’s Note: This story is the first of a three-part series on the illegalities of Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited, a Singaporean company logging in Zorzor, Lofa County.

BALAGWALAZU, Zorzor – A logging company cut trees worth an estimated US$2.2 million outside its contract area in Lofa County, a huge violation in forestry that carries one of the industry’s heaviest penalties, an investigation by The DayLight has found.

Between 2018 and last year, Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited illegally harvested probably 5,693 logs or 32,576 cubic meters of woods in Bluyeama Community Forest in the Zorzor District on Lofa’s border with Gbarpolu, according to our calculations of official records of the company’s production during that period. The harvest took place in a portion of the forest not included in its contract with the community. The majority of the logs are ekki wood,  one of the most expensive tree species on the world market.

The illegal harvesting breaks the National Forestry Reform Law. The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has admitted its approval of the harvesting was a breach of legal requirements.  

“The problem was that we had a plan that was developed by our technicians—I must admit that did not go [through the legal process],” the FDA’s Managing Director C. Mike Doryen told The DayLight in an interview. “What the company did was to take advantage of the flaws we had in the plan and extended their operations in that area, which was not a good thing.”

Those flaws have taken a toll on the FDA, though.

In January earlier this year, four top-level managers were suspended after an inquiry by the Ministry of Justice found out the agency had granted several companies excess forests to harvest. They include Jerry Yonmah, the former technical manager of the commercial department, Simulu Kamara, Abraham Sheriff and Jesse Varney, the technical manager, director for operations and director for a database of the legality verification department (LVD), respectively. Their suspensions followed two reshuffles at the agency in November last year and January earlier this year. All four men resumed work after their suspension was lifted recently.

Doryen, who directly sanctioned Sing Africa’s illegal harvesting, blamed the situation on capacity and function issues within the FDA’s legality verification and commercial departments, which deal with contracts.

“That was the problem,” Doryen said. “It was obvious if the commercial man is not with these people, there is a likelihood that there are going to be some compliance issues. Now the government has started to help us. We have two staff to be assigned to a company.”

The news comes barely seven months after a report by a conglomerate of civil society organizations found that logging companies in Grand Bassa cut trees worth nearly US$2.5 million, reminiscent of the Private Use Permit scandal roughly a decade ago.

The DayLight summed up Sing Africa’s harvesting records for the four-year period and found the total volume of the logs from the illegal sub-sections of  forest known in forestry as “blocks.” Afterward, we grouped all the logs by tree species and multiplied each group of the species by the prevailing prices on the international market. Then we summed up the values of all species to get the total value of the illicit woods.

It could be more or less than US$2.2 million worth of logs. More because our calculations excluded the company’s 2019-2020 felling. Less in that, we were uncertain that few of the controversial blocks were actually outside Sing Africa’s contract area. That is the case due to the fact that the company’s approved operational plans include blocks covering the entire forest. 

‘We saw them’

It was the leaders of the community forest that raised the alarm over the issue two years ago, which led the FDA to investigate the matter in January earlier this year. Findings of that investigation, seen by The DayLight, showed that locals had informed the FDA about the unlawful harvesting since 2020. It also revealed that Sing Africa had left some of the trees in the forest it illegally felled as early as 2017.

“The area they (Sing Africa) said they were not going to work, we saw them cutting blocks there. After that, they went there in 2021 and started cutting logs,” recalled Gayflorson Korballah, one of the community leaders who detected the illegal harvesting in an interview in a town called Balagwalazu. In normal forest practice, blocks, which measure 100 square kilometers, are determined by the size of the contract area and duration of the contract.

Sing Africa had rejected the portion of the forest at the center of the illegal harvesting because Ecowood, another company, had operated there before, according to Alexander Songu, the head of the community-forest leadership. Songu said the community tried to persuade Sing Africa to sign for the entire forest but failed. The parties sealed their deal in January 2016 for 44,444 hectares, leaving out 5,000 hectares of Bluyeama’s total forestland, the agreement shows.

The DayLight saw ample evidence of the illegal harvesting, including a number of the stumps of the illegal logs with tracking barcodes. We traced some of the logs to a sawmill run by the company in that area and in its log yards on the Gbarnga-Lofa and Buchanan-River Cess highways. We even witnessed three trucks transporting some of them to Monrovia on the 12^th of last month at 6:45 pm, beyond the legal time for the transport of woods. It was unclear whether the company obtained a permit for that transport, as the nightly movement of logs is almost completely prohibited.

Likely unlawful transport aside, the haulage of the logs is a violation of  Regulation 118-17 on Confiscated Log, Timber and Timber Products. That regulation provides that illegally harvested logs must be confiscated following a court order, which has not taken place near five months since the FDA launched its inquiry. In fact, the company is currently seeking a permit to export the logs it has transported to the Freeport of Monrovia, according to Moses Monorporlor, one of its managers.

In a separate interview, Atty. Gertrude Nyaley, the technical manager of the legality verification department of the FDA, said the agency would not grant Sing Africa an export permit for any illegal logs.  “We know how to trace each and every standing tree to the blocks from where they come,” said Nyaley, who led the department’s inquiry on the scandal.  

The FDA is matching reports from its legality verification and commercial departments, and conducting a third investigation on the matter before finally taking any actions, according to Doryen.  “Eventually, we are going to take some actions. We are in a better position now to be faster,” he said, adding the agency now had two of its staff with each company and their salaries increased by US$125.  

Sing Africa denies any wrongdoing. Mukesh Gupta, its CEO, insists his company has not broken any laws. He said they had been transparent in their operations.

“No, we are not logging outside of the concession,” said Gupta, three of whose relatives own the company,  in an interview with The DayLight. “We have cut those blocks, and FDA is aware of this,” he said, adding that the company’s agreement with the community covers all 49,444 hectares.    

Apart from Sing Africa’s agreement with Bluyeama, other evidence does not support Gupta’s claims. Sing Africa has been paying the community US$30,555.25 for land rental fees against the portion of the forest provided in their agreement, not the entire forest, according to records of the payments. In Liberian forestry, a community’s land rental fee is 55 percent of the product of the total size of the contracted forestland and US$1.25, the rate for a hectare.  

If convicted by a court, Sing Africa faces a fine twice the value of logs it illegitimately felled in Bluyeama, a six-month prison term, or both, according to Regulation 118-17. Under the regulation, it is an offense if a company cuts logs outside its permit area intentionally or negligently.

“If the investigation proves that I am wrong, FDA has all right to penalize me,” Gupta said. “If I am not wrong then there is no way they can penalize me.”

Top: Logs, abandoned by Alma Wood in Vanjah Village, Grand Cape Mount County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue

By James Harding Giahyue and Varney Kamara

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a series on the aftermaths of timber sale contracts (TSCs) across the country, which were canceled in March 2021 following years of illegitimacy.  

VANJAH VILLAGE – The company of a Lebanese businessman fleeing the law abandoned an unspecified number of logs in Grand Cape Mount County, with the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) doing little to address the problem, an investigation by The DayLight has found.

In 2018, Alma Wood Corporation (Liberia), co-owned by El Zein Hassan, abandoned the woods in a small-scale logging concession in the Gola Konneh and Porkpa Districts of Grand Cape Mount County. Hassan fled the country the following year over a debt lawsuit with  Afriland Bank, leaving the logs unattended in different locations in the area.  

“There are many logs left abandoned and damaged in the bush,” Aaron Quaye, a community leader, told The DayLight. There are over 5,000 cubic meters [of logs] in the forests.”

This reporter saw scores of the woods scattered across the forest, the company’s log yard in a town called Mafalla, another town named Gohn  and Vanjah Village. Some locals were burning the logs to make charcoal in Mafalla.   Quaye said there were more logs in forests but The DayLight could not reach them due to the difficult road network in that region.

The DayLight’s calculation of the company’s official production and export records between 2018 and 2020 shows that it did not ship 519.267 cubic meters of logs it harvested in that area. That number could be more, given that the records only show the company’s 2018 production in the concession affecting Vanjah Village and Benduma town, where Quaye lives, not the forest around Bong Village, where Alma Wood also operated.

Woods are abandoned if they are “unattended” between 15 and 180 working days depending on their location, according to Regulation 116-17 on Abandoned Log, Timber and Timber Products. It was created in 2017 and repealed certain sections of Regulation 108-07 that narrowed the definition for “abandoned logs” as logs outside a contract area without tracking barcodes.

The regulation requires the FDA to notify the public over a long period once it learns of the situation. Ruth Varney, the agency’s representative in the western region, confirmed to DayLight the community had told her about the abandoned logs.

In April earlier this year, the FDA gave all logging companies a one-month period to declare logs they have harvested as it takes inventory of probably abandoned logs countrywide. That deadline has expired a month ago and the agency said it would begin auctioning the woods this month.

“Those who did not remove their logs as per the stipulated time, the lawyer will now go to the court to seek judicial action to have the logs confiscated the auctioned,” said FDA’s Managing Director Mike Doryen in a rare interview with The DayLight. “That is a problem that we must solve.”

It was unclear whether the FDA has exhausted a mandatory process in the regulation in order to auction the controversial logs, taking 114 working days or just under six months. Within this time, it needs to investigate, possibly remove the woods to a safe location and make several public notices through the media and its website. It is only when no one claims the logs after that process that the FDA can obtain a court warrant for the auction.  Doryen did not show any evidence that these things have been done.

Besides, Alma Wood’s own legal nightmare makes it even harder for a normal auctioning. Earlier this year, the FDA disapproved a deal for the logs to be sold to East End, a company owned by former Minister of Justice Cllr. Benedict Sannoh, over Alma Wood’s lawsuit. The agency learned that the logs had been used as collateral for Sky Insurance Company to pay the bail for Hassan’s release by the Commercial Court in Monrovia.

Hassan had taken a US643,000 loan from Afriland Bank missed several payment deadlines, according to several people familiar with the case (all parties to the case denied The DayLight access to court filings and an interview). Hassan would escape the country thereafter. Efforts by The DayLight to contact him or representatives of the company were not successful.     

It is not just Hassan’s dealing with the court that is unlawful. Alma Wood’s operations in Porkpa and Gola Konneh are also illegal. Five-thousand-hectare logging concessions, known across the forestry sector as timber sale contracts (TSCs), are meant for only firms with at least 51 percent Liberian shareholdings. The company’s two operations in Cape Mount were some of five illegal deals the FDA signed or sanctioned that we and the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists (CoFEJ) exposed as part of an investigation on TSC across the country. The one in Quaye’s community is called TSC A11 and the other one is TSC A16. Hassan and Radwan Darwiche, a Senegalese man, equally share the company’s  500 stocks, according to its legal documents. It had been subcontracted to the two TSCs in 2016 by Bassa Logging Company, a Liberian firm, and Sun Yeun, a 98 percent Chinese-owned firm, which also breaks the National Forestry Reform Law.

The two TSCs and nine others in Cape Mount, Grand Bassa, Gbarpolu and Bong County overstayed their legal timeframe of at least five years. All lasted for more than a decade combining to establish some of the most chaotic forest licenses of the postwar era.

Josephus Bank, the CEO and co-owner (one percent shareholder)  of Sun Yeun claimed that the company had changed shareholders in an interview with us but did not present any evidence. The company has not changed shareholders since its formation in 2008, the documents we obtained from the Liberian Business Registry show. He blamed the FDA for the abandonment of the logs.

Quaye said Clarence Massaquoi, the CEO and co-owner of Bassa Logging, visited the forest last month with an “investor.” Massaquoi did not respond to specific queries on the matter in a WhatsApp chat.

“FDA contributed to those logs being there today. When Alma Wood’s contract expired, I wrote the FDA informing it about logs being [in the forest]. FDA delayed and I wanted to sell at the time,” Banks said in that interview relative to the logs in TSC A16. The FDA refuted that claim.

Massaquoi faces a heavy penalty to redeem the logs amid Hassan’s escape, under the regulation on abandoned logs. He is required to first pay an administrative fee associated with, including the probable transport, storage, security and public notification associated with the woods. Penalties include a payment two times the volume of the logs in question by the legal fees for their stumps. Stumpage fees are calculated based on percentages of the international prices of categories of logs. The regulation was formulated to minimize the waste of forest resources and compel legal compliance in the harvesting and shipment of logs.

Quaye, who savored an opportunity to join his community’s forest management leadership in 2016, just before Alma Wood signed an agreement with them, said they were the biggest losers in everything. FDA had canceled all TSCs in March last year but did not see to it that communities get their benefits, leaving Alma Wood indebted to him and other villagers. Bassa Logging/Alma Wood owes affected communities US$56,550 in land-related fees, according to official documents. It did not pay villagers a cent for the trees it felled, fees for scholarships and a handpump, Quaye said.

“We regret all these things that are happening to our community,” Quaye said. “We are regretting because it takes so many years for trees to get mature in the forest. Our forest is depleted without any benefit that communities can point to.”  

The FDA told an annual meeting of forestry players in March earlier this year that it would work with the union of community leaderships to address overdue payments and other benefits. He restated that in our interview with him.

“We didn’t do that (addressing benefits and other issues),” Doryen said, “but we will do it now.”

This story was a production of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists (CoFEJ) of Liberia and The DayLight.   

Top: Some of the logs Sun Yeun/Alma Wood illegally harvested and abandoned in a log yard in MaFalla, Grand Cape Mount County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue

By Varney Kamara

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series on abandoned logs, which highlights the failure of the forestry sector to prevent the waste of much-needed forest resources across the country. 

BONG VILLAGE, Grand Cape Mount – An unlawful deal for a company to purchase a consignment of logs illegally felled and abandoned in a forest in Grand Cape Mount County has stalled after authorities found out the woods are collateral in a lawsuit.  

In 2018, Alma Wood Corporation (Liberia) Limited felled the logs as part of a logging concession the forestry sector calls Timber Sales Contract Area 16 or TSC A16 in the Gola Konneh District. The company’s owners reportedly fled the country, leaving the logs there until the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) canceled the contract last year.

Sun Yeun, the original holder of the contract,  and the community forest development committee (CFDC) of that area, tried to sell the logs to East End Logging Company, owned by former Minister of Justice Benedict Sannoh, earlier this year. But the FDA disapproved the deal because Alma Wood had used the logs as a surety to obtain a US$643,000 loan from Afriland Bank.

The bank had sued Alma Wood after the period of the loan elapsed. El Zein Hassan, the company’s CEO had been arrested but was released on bail, with Sky Insurance Company filing his bond. Hassan would later flee the country and the court ruled that the insurer seize the logs, according to several individuals familiar with the case. (Our own efforts to obtain the court’s file on the case did not materialize. We will update the story with details from the document once we obtain it).

Afriland Bank and Sky Insurance declined to speak on the matter.

The forest where the logs were harvested has been marred by irregularities from the very beginning. Covering 5,000 hectares, TSCs are meant for companies that have at least 51 percent Liberian shareholdings. They were meant to empower Liberians following 14 years of civil war during which time local businesspeople were marginalized by foreign firms that supplied warring factions with arms. But TSC A16 was awarded to Sun Yeun, 98 percent of whose shares are held by a Chinese businessman named Wei Zhang, according to the company’s legal documents.

Also, the subcontract deal between Sun Yeun and Alma Wood was illegal as the latter company’s equity stakes are equally shared between Hassan, a Lebanese and a Radwan Wardwiche, a Senegalese tycoon, according to Alma Wood’s legal documents.

The contract also overstayed its legal timeframe of at most five years, remaining active for more than a decade having been issued in 2009. The board of directors of the FDA had illegally extended the contract alongside 10 others in 2017 but recalled that move in March last year.

Josephus Banks, Sun Yeun’s CEO and one of two of the company’s Liberian shareholders claims that the company is not majority Chinese-owned but has failed to show any proof. He also argued in an interview with The DayLight, that its subcontract deal with Alma Wood was not illegal.  

The logs in question are abandoned as per law. Depending on their location, logs are abandoned if they are “unattended” between 15 and 180 working days, according to Regulation 116-17 on Abandoned Logs, Timber and Timber Products. In this case, the logs are abandoned because they have remained in the forest for over 60 working days.

Banks blames the abandonment of the logs on the FDA.

“FDA contributed to those logs being there today. When Alma Wood’s contract expired, I wrote the FDA informing it about logs being on the lining. FDA delayed and I wanted to sell at the time,” said Banks. Locals also said they informed the FDA about the logs in 2019, with Ruth Varney, its official responsible for the western region, confirming that to The DayLight in a mobile phone interview.  

In April earlier this year, the FDA gave all logging companies operating in the country a month grace period to declare the trees they have felled, even though FDA should have companies’ production and export records.   

“We should be headed for auction this month (June) [in the eastern region] and then the exercise will continue in the northern region and then go down south and western part,” said Mike Doryen, FDA’s Managing Director, in an interview with The DayLight.

“The court is going to make a determination, and that is what we will follow,” Doryen added in reference to the Alma Wood case.

It would have been another violation had the FDA approved East End’s purchase of the abandoned logs. The regulation on abandoned logs requires the FDA to transport the logs to a safe location and reenter them into the government tracking system known in forestry as the chain of custody (CoC). An auction only can take place after a court warrant if no one claims the woods following months of a mandatory, legal notice. If Sun Yeun wants to redeem the logs, it would have to do that within 14 working days of the FDA’s seizure, provide proof of ownership and pay an administrative fee for each of the logs.  Those requirements have yet to be met.

But the case between Alma Wood and Sky Insurance in Monrovia has dashed the hopes of locals, who had wanted the logs sold to get overdue benefits now that TSCs are no more. Sun Yeun owes the villagers here and a nearby concession (TSC A15) a combined US$190,900 for land-related fees, official records show. It also owes affected communities US$3,000 for scholarships and failed to build 10 latrines and one handpump, according to Jaycee Farr, the general secretary of the community forest development committee, which manages villagers’ logging-generated benefits.

“We are happy that people came here to buy the logs. If the logs are sold, the communities will be able to get something as their benefits,” Farr said. “If the government is saying TSCs are canceled, and then companies are owing communities, how will the communities benefit from whatever things they own, or whatever things that have been taken away from them?”

Banks, Sun Yeun’s CEO, refutes Farr’s comments as a “blatant lie.

“Of all the TSCs that were operating in this country, I was the most potent TSC holder. We (Sun Yeun) brought in more than US$5 million worth of equipment, brand new, not used,” he said, even though records of the company show otherwise. The US$190,874.50  his company owes the two communities is the second-highest debt for land rental fees —next to Bulgar and Vincent Timber Company—among former TSC holders, official documents show.   

At an annual meeting of the Liberian government, the European Union and civil society in March, the FDA promised to work with the National Union of Community Forest Development Committee (NUCFDC) to address TSCs’ arrears, according to records of the event.

Doryen said the FDA was committed to that plan. “Yes, we didn’t do that (addressing benefits and other issues) but we will do it now,” Doryen added.

Funding for this story was provided by the Liberia Media Center (LMC). The DayLight maintained complete editorial independence over its content.

Top: Varguaye is one of the towns affected by Akewa’s operations in the Gola Konneh Community Forest. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue

By Emmanuel Sherman

Editor’s Note: This story is the second of a two-part series on Akewa Group of Companies’ operations in Liberia, focusing on the shortcomings of communities where the company operates. The first part emphasized the contribution of the Forestry Development Authority to the firm’s violations.   

VARGUAYE, Grand Cape Mount County – Something did not seem right to Willie Williams about Akewa Group of Companies’ tax clearance when it bid for the Gola Konneh

Community’s Forest. So, Williams, who had just been elected chairman of the community assembly of Gola Konneh (a powerful body in community forestry), wrote the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) to verify the document.  

It turned out Akewa’s tax clearance was fake as Williams had suspected all along. The tax clearance Akewa had submitted was “forged and was definitely not obtained from the LRA,” the agency said in a letter dated March 25, 2019. The communication added that the tax clearance Akewa presented belonged to Tiger Quarry, a mining company.

Williams’ effort to disqualify Akewa was opposed by other members of the leadership and county officials.  Furious over that, he resigned and Akewa went on to win the bid for the 49,179-hectare forestland, beating Green Wood, Auzy International, Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited and Master Logger some of whose credentials were legitimate. Not long after that, Akewa signed the agreement with Gola Konneh. No records show it was punished.   

“I am not responsible for [the] fake tax payment. Forestry Development Authority (FDA) is there and has oversight, not me. I can’t do their work,” said James Momo, chief officer of the Gola Konneh’s community forest management body, in a mobile phone interview. “We wanted somebody that we could work together.”

Forestry laws do not back Momo’s claims. The Community Rights Law of 2009, with Respect to Forest Lands, which was created when Momo was a senator of Grand Cape Mount County, gives communities that very right. “Communities have the responsibility of ensuring transparency and accountability in community forest resource management,” the law says.

The FDA refutes his comments. Managing Director C. Mike Doryen tells The DayLight in an interview that Akewa later presented a genuine document before acquiring Gola Konneh. “We prevented Akewa from doing further business until they could provide [their] tax clearance The clearance was given, they rectified it and they paid a fine and that’s how we resumed business with them,” Doryen adds without showing any proof of the fine.

Liberian laws require harsh punishments for faking a tax clearance. Under the National Forestry Reform Law, a person could get a 12-month prison term for forging bidding documents or a US$10,000 fine, or both. That person faces up to five years in prison under the Penal Code, as using false information in bidding constitutes perjury under Regulation 103-07 of the FDA Ten Core Regulations. They could pay a fine for breaking the Revenue Code as well.

The situation in Gola Konneh is typical of the contributions of community forest leaders to Akewa’s violations of forestry laws and regulations, spanning over a decade. While the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has unlawfully approved one Akewa project to another and violated its own laws during this time, villagers have aided the company in exploiting themselves.

Starting logging operations in 2008, Akewa is one of the most infamous companies in the postwar forestry sector, dogged by irregularities.  Apart from its tax clearance scam, it has been involved in the industry’s biggest scandal and has been indebted to communities every year.

Doryen says the Liberian government had given Akewa and other companies more time pay all overdue debts. “At one point in time companies requested from the previous government to give them time to settle forest-related fees because they were not making a profit,” Doryen says. There was flexibility applied to some of these things at the time.”

‘I blame the elders’

Expectedly, the expectations of townspeople in Gola Konneh over Akewa have not been met as it has not lived up to the agreement. Akewa owes the community US$83,620 in land rental and scholarship fees. The company has not paved roads, constructed handpumps, erected latrines and provided an ambulance for affected communities it is obligated to do within the first three years of its operations, according to the agreement.   

The parties signed a memorandum of understanding in November last year, giving Akewa up to August later this year to make all payments. It, however, has already missed monthly deadlines in the new payment scheme, according to Abraham Sirleaf, the chairman of the community assembly, Williams’ successor.     

“The company has not employed a single youth,” says Abubaker Jalloh, a youth representative, in reference to a clause in the agreement. “I regret why Akewa took our forest.” 

“I blame the elders and other big people of the county for not allowing us as [community assembly] members to decide which company we wanted, and they took Akewa,” says Miatta Pratt, a member of the community assembly. 

Gola Konneh has itself to blame, according to Bonathan Walaka, the national facilitator of the National Union of Community Forest Management Body (NUCFMB), which advocates for community forest leadership. Shortly before the  Akewa agreement, Gola Konneh’s leaders visited the Beyan Poye Community Forest to share experiences. Walaka says Gola Konneh leaders ignored what they learned from their Beyan Poye counterparts.

“The forest governance of Gola Konneh didn’t follow the due-diligence process properly before contract negotiation with Akewa because the company has noncompliance issues with Beyan Poye,” Walaka tells The DayLight in an emailed interview.

Beyan Poye has had a worse experience with Akewa over their 2017 agreement. The company owes the Margibi community US$85,679 for the rental of its land and the logs it harvested there between 2018 and 2021, according to that community’s leadership. With an exception of a lone handpump, the Nigerian company has also not fulfilled its promises to the community. Now both parties are embroiled in arbitration, with the community opting to terminate the contract with the company following nearly five years of chaos.

But Beyan Poye could have prevented this from happening if they had paid attention to Akewa’s track record. It was not Akewa’s first logging deal in the Gibi District, after all.  In the early 2010s, it had obtained a private use permit (PUP) there, including a large portion of the Beyan Poye today. That PUP and 62 others, covering 2.5 million hectares of forestland or 23 percent of the country’s landmass, had been illegally awarded. They became the biggest scandal in the postwar logging industry: the private use permit (PUP) of 2012. Then-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf signed an executive order canceling all of them after an official inquest.

The investigation found villagers in Gibi did not consent to the Akewa’s use of their land, its PUP overlapped with private property and was never resolved, and that the company did not have a business plan, a major prequalification requirement that provides information on the companies’ technical and financial capacity to operate and pay dues.

That was not the only record Beyan Poye had at its disposal. Akewa had left a similar trail in  Compound One in Grand Bassa County, just across the Farmington River. It had logged there for nearly nine years, leaving that community with a stretch of dirt road and US$10,000, according to the community’s leadership. In March last year, the FDA canceled that contract, known in forestry as timber sale contract area three (TSC A3). Akewa still owes that community US$11,624 for rental of its land, according to official records, and an unspecified amount for logs it harvested there, according to the community leadership.  

Beyan Poye ignored all those things and leased its 33,380-hectare forest to the company.  

“[We] the community people were ignorant of the forest procedures,” says Jehudi Barnyou, chief officer of Beyan Poye’s community forest management body. “We did not go on any training to know how it works.”

“We had no experience yet,” says Amos Boyer, co-chairman of the community assembly of Beyan Poye, who as commissioner of the Gibi District in 2017 introduced Akewa’s owner and CEO Abigail Funke Odebunmi to the community. “Having all the needs for road connectivity, we were very much eager.  Since it was logging business, we felt we were blessed.”

Loretta Pope-kai, a lead campaigner at Foundation for Community Initiative (FCI), thinks communities have to do better in managing their forest to harness their benefits.

“Community forest governance structures have the power to develop their communities. Ignorance is never an excuse,” Mrs. Pope-Kai says. “If they continue like this, they will continue to push themselves into poverty and underdevelopment.”

Akewa did not respond to any of The DayLight’s queries for comments. Mrs. Odebunmi initially agreed to speak with us in December last year—after many failed attempts—and then declined a formal interview when we finally met her. We emailed her our questions as she had requested but she still did not respond. She again ignored our WhatsApp message in April earlier this year.

This story was produced by the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists (CoFEJ)  of Liberia

Top: Vanjah Village is one of the communities affected by an illegal subcontract deal between Bassa Logging and Alma Wood. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue

By Varney Kamara

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series on the aftermaths of timber sales contracts (TSCs), which were canceled in March 2021 following years of illegitimacy.  

MONROVIA –  The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) awarded and approved five contracts—meant for companies with majority Liberian shareholders—to foreign companies, a violation of forestry laws and regulations. Some of the illegal contracts lasted for over a decade before they were recently canceled, an investigation by The DayLight has found.

Between 2008 and 2009, the FDA awarded timber sales contracts (TSCs) to Akewa Group of Companies, Thunder Bird Company and Sun Yeun Company. It also approved a subcontracting deal between Bassa Logging and Alma Wood for patches of forests in Grand Bassa and Grand Cape Mount Counties.

Under the National Forestry Reform Law of Liberia and the Ten Core Regulations, TSCs, which cover 5,000 hectares, are meant for only firms with at least 51 percent Liberian shareholding. However, Akewa is a Nigerian-owned company, Thunder Bird, a Lebanese and Sun Yuen, a Chinese enterprise and Alma Wood Lebanese-Senegalese, according to the companies’ articles of incorporation. In fact, only two percent of all four companies’ shares are held by Liberians.  

A  Nigerian businesswoman, Abigail Funke Odebunmi, has 60 percent, followed by Chief Kenneth Amazeika and Timothy Odebunmi with 20 percent apiece. It was unclear whether the company met that requirement when it obtained TSC A3 in Grand Bassa in 2008, as Akewa’s article of incorporation does not show its initial shareholders. Nevertheless, the company’s current ownership status indicates Akewa was barred under the “Liberianization” clause of the law. The company initially registered at the Liberian Business Registry on June 29, 2009, proving it did not have a business registration certificate when it obtained TSC A3 a year earlier. That was a violation of the Business Corporation Act of 1976 and the FDA Ten Core Regulations on prequalification. Akewa had been involved in the infamous Private Use Permit (PUP) Scandal, in which some 2.5 million hectares of forests, or 23 percent of the country’s landmass, were illegally awarded to logging companies.  

Odebunmi did not respond to our request for an interview on Akewa’s shareholding.

Thunder Bird, which was awarded TSC A08 in Porkpa District, Grand Cape Mount County, is equally owned by Lebanese brothers Tony Ayoub and George Ayoub. The DayLight was not successful in contacting Thunder Bird.

A Chinese businessman, Wei Zhang holds 98 percent of the shares of Sun Yeun, which held TSC A15 and A16 in Gola Konneh Porkpa District, Grand Cape Mount. Liberian businessmen Erik Bauman Vincent and Josephus Banks have one percent each to complete the firm’s shareholding.  

C. Mike Doryen, the managing director of the FDA, said the agency would investigate the companies and use its findings for future reference. “If it was an error made, we are guided so that we don’t repeat the same thing,” Doryen told The DayLight in an interview at the FDA’s headquarters in Whein Town, Paynesville. “I will check on it myself and get my research people to check and see exactly what it is.”

After being unlawfully awarded TSC A16, in 2016 Sun Yeun subcontracted the concession to Alma Wood, a company owned by Lebanese businessman El-Zein Hassan and his Senegalese partner Radwan Darwiche. Both men have 250 stocks apiece, which barred them from obtaining the contract but the deal still went on.

Two years later, Alma Wood was also subcontracted by Bassa Logging Company, a 100 percent Liberian-owned business, which operated TSC A11, situated between the Gola Konneh and Porkpa Districts.

Josephus Banks, one of Sun Yeun’s two Liberian shareholders, claimed that the company amended its legal document to meet the shareholding requirement for TSC before acquiring the concession but showed no proof. The firm’s legal document shows that Sun Yeun has not amended its article of incorporation since it was established in 2008.

Banks blames the FDA for Sun Yeun’s illegal subcontract with Alma Wood. “If Alma Wood’s prequalification document is fake, then we blame the FDA for that because it is FDA that qualifies companies,” Banks told The DayLight in an interview in Monrovia. He was making a reference to Regulation 104-07, which mandates the FDA to only prequalify companies if they meet the Liberian-shareholding requirement.  

FDA claims Alma Wood’s subcontract was legal though the law shows otherwise. “Operational agreement has nothing with concession agreement between the government and Liberians. Once you have your TSC, you can do an operational agreement,” Doryen said.

His claims were refuted by a lawyer knowledgeable about the forestry sector, who spoke to The DayLight and did not want to be named for fear of reprisal. “Of course, once a stated requirement is not meant, that is a breach of the law,” the lawyer said.

Efforts to reach Alma Wood did not materialize, as the company has ceased to operate since 2019. Its co-owner and CEO Hassan reportedly fled Liberia after he was sued over his failure to repay a US$643,000 loan he had taken from the Afriland bank.  

Clarence Massaquoi (not the lawmaker), the CEO of Bassa Logging, also did not respond to queries for comments on the matter.

Awarding the five contracts to the four foreign firms undermined the intent of the forestry laws and regulations to empower Liberians. During the Liberian Civil War (1989-2003), foreign logging companies ran the sector, using proceeds to fund warring factions, according to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), in what became to be known as “conflict timbers” or “logs of war.”  Consequently, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Liberian timbers in 2002, overseeing a three-year reform of the wartorn industry. The reform addressed the marginalization of Liberian businesspeople, with exclusive stakes in certain contracts, including TSCs.

“In an effort to re-establish a vibrant domestic forestry sector, the government shall accept bids on forest management contracts covering a land area of between 50,000 and 99,999 hectares only from qualified bidders that demonstrate at least 51 percent ownership by Liberian citizens,” reads the National Forestry Reform Law. “If no qualified Liberian bidders present tenders for the contract or secure the contract during one bidding cycle, the [Forestry Development Authority] may re-bid the contract through a process open only to qualified bidders that demonstrate 51 percent ownership by Liberian citizens.”

The law mandates the FDA to make a report to the National Legislature on the impact of that portion of the law on the country’s economy. However, that report has not been made since 2006. C. Mike Doryen, the managing director of the FDA, said the agency would write the report later this year.

‘Inconsistent with the laws’

The five illegally awarded TSCs undermined the economic empowerment pillar of the Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development. President George Weah promised in his Inaugural Address not to make Liberians “spectators in their own economy. My government will prioritize the interests of Liberian-owned businesses and offer programs to help them become more competitive and offer services that international investors seek as partners,” President Weah said at the time.

All five unlawful TSCs awarded to the three companies and six others overstayed their legal timeframe, our investigation also found. By law, TSCs run for three years and can be extended by two years, totaling a five-year maximum period.

Having been issued between 2008 and 2009, they should have all expired by 2014. Finally, in March last year, the board of directors of the FDA discontinued all 11 TSCs, saying that its decision in 2017 to allow the contracts to continue was “inconsistent with the laws governing forest management.”  

This story is a production of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia.