Top: Some of the woods were at the center of a legal battle between the Forestry Development Authority and Renaissance Group Incorporated. Photo credit: Civil Society Independent Forest Monitors (CSIFM)
By Gerald C. Koinyeneh
BUCHANAN – The Second Judicial Circuit Court in Grand Bassa has ruled in favor of a Liberian-owned company to continue logging activities in its concession area in the county, following a fierce 15-month legal battle with the Liberian government.
Renaissance, Inc. had sued the Ministry of Justice, the Forestry Development Authority (FDA), and its board of directors for double jeopardy over their decision to halt the company from carrying out logging activities in its concession, known in the logging industry as Timber Sale Contract Area Two (TSC A02) in Compound One, Grand Bassa County after it was already fined for violating the agreement.
In his ruling, Judge Zuballah Kizeku affirmed the unanimous verdict of Liable brought down by the six-man jury which pointed out that the FDA had already imposed an administrative penalty of US$105,000 against the company for violating the contractual agreement and there was no need for further punishment.
“This court decides not to disturb but to uphold, affirm and confirm the unanimous verdict of Liable brought down by the trial jury against the … respondents. Hence, the said respondents are hereby adjudged liable to petitioner with costs ruled against the said respondents.”
CSOs had called the company’s illegal operation, “represents a huge breach of the law and points to a disturbing trend of irregularities and non-compliance with the forest laws of Liberia. “The evidence points to a huge loss of revenue to the state and to communities. This must be remedied, and communities must receive the full benefits they have the right to.”
It was co-authored by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), the Independent Forest Monitors (IFM) and the National Union of Community Forest Development Committee (NUCFDC) in a consortium called the Independent Forest Monitoring Coordination Mechanism. Its work was funded by the European Union, the United Kingdom and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
Following the release of the report, the FDA imposed US$105,000 on the company as the condition for exporting the log, which it paid.
But just as the company was about to begin the exportation of the logs, the Ministry of Justice ordered the FDA and its Board to halt the company’s operation pending a new investigation into its alleged illegal operation.
The company had said the Ministry of Justice’s decision left the logs lying in the forest for over two years, thereby devaluing their market value, according to court filings.
The company also argued that the Ministry’s action in stopping it from exporting the logs amounts to double punishment, something it said violates its constitutional right. The Constitution of Liberia prohibits subjecting a person to double jeopardy, the legal phrase for trying someone twice for the same crime.
It then called on the court to rule in its favor to allow it to resume operation and ship the logs.
“Wherefore and in view of the foregoing, petitioner petitions your Honor and this Honorable Court to declare the right of the petitioner in keeping with the laws of this Republic,” the company, through its lawyer Jimmy Bombo, told the court at the time.
The defendants had called on the court to dismiss the charges brought against them. They, among other things, said the company has no legal standing to sue them because its article of incorporation was invalid.
They accused the company of presenting an article of incorporation that was different from the original article it submitted to the FDA before it was awarded the contract. They claimed the company and its partners, with two shareholders and its Board of Directors, harvested timber outside of its concession and an investigative panel sanctioned by the Ministry recommended the payment of US$1.745 million.
On the issue of double punishment, the defendants had argued that the company did not suffer any form of double jeopardy as it claimed because it was not indicted, prosecuted or convicted in any court of competent jurisdiction.
But the court rejected that argument, ordering the company to resume operation and sell the logs. It sanctioned the company to sell the logs in order not to lose its monetary value amid the FDA’s decision to appeal the judgment.
“The Court finds it just fair, equitable in the best interest of both parties to order the sale of the logs, subject of these proceedings, and any monetary proceeds therefrom be put in an escrow account for the protection of the future interest of the prevailing party, if applicable.”
The court ordered the FDA, the regulator of the forest sector, to appraise the monetary value of the logs, and called on the company to designate a suitable buyer all under its supervision.
The court also instructed a reputable bank in Liberia to open a special escrow account in its (court) name to deposit the proceed from the sale of the logs.
The court’s ruling is a huge blow to the FDA in its bid to stop the company and its partners from operating under TSC-A2, issued in 2009 for just three years but remains active nearly 10 years after its legal expiration date. In March last year, TSC A02 and six others in Grand Bassa, Gbarpolu, Bong, and Grand Cape Mount were finally canceled.
Top: A man brushes grass from a pile of logs illegally harvested by Universal Forestry Corporation, a company started and still owned by Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah. The DayLIght/James Harding Giahyue
By James Harding Giahyue
Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series on Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah’s conflict of interest as a shareholder in Universal Forestry Corporation. It focuses on Minister Kruah’s illegal logging dealings.
TAPPITA, Nimba County – At the end of a 20-minute motorcycle ride from a town called Korlay, lie dozens of logs on a rocky, bushy road into the forest.
“That’s just small you see here. There are more in the bush,” one man tells my colleague Gabriel Dixon, our two motorcycle-taxi riders and me, as he cleared grass from a pile of logs. We cannot name him and other villagers we will interview over their fear of retribution.
We are in the Sehzueplay Community Forest in the Tappita District of Nimba County, where Universal Forestry Corporation (UFC) operates. The company signed an agreement with villages here in 2020 to share logging resources for 12 years. Last month, an investigation by The DayLight found that the Minister of Posts and Telecommunication Cooper Kruah is one of the owners of the company, rendering the agreement illegal. Kruah has admitted to being in a conflict of interest over his continued role in the company for more than four years since he became a government official.
But we have come here to uncover more of UFC’s violations, beginning with these logs it harvested in this part of the Gio National Forest. The leadership of Sehzueplay says the woods were cut between October 2020 and November last year, and records from the harvesting corroborate this timeline.
The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) did not approve the harvesting, according to a January 21, 2022 memo from a ranger to Jin Kyung, UFC’s general manager, we have obtained.
“During our recent visit to your concession area, we discovered that you were doing illegal [felling]. You are felling [trees] without being awarded a [felling] certificate,” the memo reads, signed by Steve Kromah, the ranger responsible for forest contracts in the Tappita area.
“In view of the above, you are hereby ordered closed with immediate [effect], pending advice from the FDA management,” it says.
Kromah had said in an earlier interview with The DayLight in Buchanan that he had halted the company’s operations because “Their felling certificates are all expired.” Now, he accuses us of misunderstanding his initial comments on the matter.
“Maybe I don’t know English but that is what I mean. Maybe you don’t understand forestry language very well but what I wrote is what you’re seeing there,” Kromah says in a phone call.
“When management asks me, I will know how to answer. Management will understand it that way. You cannot understand it. I didn’t write it to you,” he adds and hung up the phone. He has been reassigned, according to sources familiar with a recent wave of reshuffles at the FDA over illegal logging.
Unauthorized harvesting is a violation of the Code of Harvesting Practices. (That is the same offense another company committed in River Cess) UFC is required to pay a fine of twice the total value of the volume of each species of logs illegally harvested as per their world market prices, according to the Regulation on Confiscated Logs, Timber and Timber Products.
The FDA will, however, have to obtain a court order to confiscate and auction the logs but it must first find out the total volume of the illegally harvested logs. Partial data of the harvesting we obtained shows 150 logs, but the community leadership estimate there are 200 more woods. Some of them are in good shape but others have defects, indicating it would be difficult to auction them.
UFC also did not conduct an environmental and social impact assessment in 2020 for its operations in Sehzueplay, according to the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI). That again contravenes the Code of Harvesting Practices, which sets it as a prerequisite for felling trees. The Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia (EPA), the government institution that oversees the assessment, did not grant us an interview on the matter up to writing time.
Logs Universal Forestry Corporation, owned by Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah, abandoned scores of logs in Tappita, Nimba County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
That would not be UFC’s only violation, though. The company subcontracted another firm called Ihsaan Logs Company (ILC) with neither the approval of the FDA nor the consent of the community. ILC is managed and owned by Mohammed Paasewe, the former Superintendent of Grand Cape Mount County.
In fact, ILC-hired loggers harvested some of the logs we see in the forest, according to communications between the two companies seen by The DayLight. Logs with “UFC/ILC” markings shine through wet, towering grass, back that evidence.
UFC and ILC had signed the illegal agreement in November last year, the documents, seen by The DayLight, show. The deal was torn apart, less than two months later due to disagreements over payments and equipment, according to the documents.
“We have resolved to inform [you] that as of the date of this letter, the [proposed] agreement is off our table for negotiation, and that we are advising you to immediately recall all of your personnel/employees that were sent to our concession areas,” a January 31, 2022 letter from UFC to ILC reads. “We also reserve the right to demand payment for our yellow machine that you used… during your operation.”
Paasewe replies to an unnamed representative of UFC with a series of requests for repayment of fees his company had paid UFC in a WhatsApp chat seen by The DayLight.
“What happened to the US$1,200 that you received before… (US$700 for the visit of his computer man to attend a meeting [a] in Tappita, US$500 to stop the mechanics from taking parts from his machine)?
“What happened to the US$300 to bring electricity to his house, US$300 to finish his preparation for the new place, US$400 for the repair of the pickup and US$300 for documentation, and also who pays the US$500 for the advance payment for the repair of the D8 [bulldozer]?
Paasewe alleges in the exchange that Kyung had told him that Sehzueplay had 19,000 hectares of forestland, not the 6,890 hectares it covers in reality.
Kyung replies to Paasewe roughly two weeks after his previous letter, agreeing to repay ILC US$10,850 in March, which Paasewe says has not happened five months on. Efforts to speak to Kyung did not materialize. He did not reply to emailed questions on his deal with ILC and other issues as well. We called him twice but he said he was in the forest and had no access to a computer or internet.
As part of their deal, ILC was supposed to pay UFC US$200,000 as an advance payment on the sales of logs at the rate of US$30 per cubic meter, regardless of the species. (Logs are priced based on their species) In return, ILC agreed to harvest at least 1,500 cubic meters of logs each of the remaining 10 years of the contract.
An illegal logging deal between Universal Forestry Corporation and its Ihsaan Logs Company failed over payments and equipment. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
Then the parties settled to delay the construction of the headquarters of the community’s leadership and a school building— both due last year—by two and three years, respectively, the unapproved agreement shows.
“That is why we did not sign that document. “It was not in our interest,” Moses Wobuah, the head of the community leadership, tells us in an interview at his home in Korlay, one of seven towns and villages affected by UFC’s unlawful operations. Volay, Zeongehn, Zuolay, Graie, and Sehye Village complete the list.
“That document is null and void. It is not legal,” Wobuah adds.
Paasewe has not repaid the full amount he embezzled. “We are in the process,” he tells me in an interview at his office in Monrovia. “I don’t want to have those kinds of things hanging over my head. I want to get that out of the way.”
Having admitted to theft barely a year before his UFC subcontract, Paasewe’s company is ineligible for any logging operations, according to the National Forestry Reform Law. Businesspeople who concede to such a crime are barred by the law from any kind of forest resource license for five years.
ILC applied for prequalification to do logging in Liberia last year but has not been approved, according to Paasewe and sources at the FDA. The agency did not provide The DayLight copies of ILC’s application documents, though public access to such information is guaranteed under the National Forestry Reform Law and the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between Liberia and the European Union. The FDA had flouted its own Regulation on Bidder Qualifications by initially prequalifying UFC for Sehzueplay with the Postmaster General of the Republic of Liberia one of its shareholders.
Paasewe says he is willing to relinquish his shares in ILC or place them in a firm or a person he has no control over to be in line with the law.
“We’re going to have to do an overhauling. When we are reapplying, you can be assured of that,” he says.
“I am grateful for the work you do because this will keep everybody’s foot to the fire to do what is right. Whether we are victims or whatever, I think when you are called to order, you should always be ready to correct and do your best. What you are trying to save is not for me but for the generation coming after me,” he adds.
Paasewe’s criminal record worsens things for UFC. Like conflict of interest, its unauthorized transfer of the agreement to ILC is another ground for termination of its contract, according to the forestry reform law.
Kruah, a lawyer, claims that turning over his five-percent shares to Prince Kruah, his son, also a lawyer, prevents him from a conflict of interest. “His son is above the constitutional decision-making age and he even [owns] more shares than his father, which is his right under the Constitution of Liberia,” says Caesar Slapeh, a spokesman of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in a Facebook message to The DayLight.
But that is not what the law says. It mandates an official of the government to relinquish their shares in private companies doing business with the government to an “entity outside the person’s influence and control, such as an unrelated individual or a blind trust…” With Prince Kruah’s 15 percent equity in UFC, according to the company’s “amended” article of incorporation, Minister Kruah now has more stakes in the company and is in starker contrast with the law.
Owned by Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah, Universal Forestry Corporation has failed to build a school, a road, and provide scholarships for towns and villages affected by its operations. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
Most of the violations we find mirror UFC’s role in the infamous Private Use Permit (PUP) Scandal of 2012, in which some 2.5 million hectares of forests were illegally awarded to logging companies. An official inquest found the company committed several offenses while logging in Butaw District, Sinoe County between 2010 and 2012. That investigation found that UFC did not conduct an environmental and social impact assessment, skipped an environmental permit, did not present a harvesting certificate before commencing logging and that it paid community benefits into a personal account, among other things. UFC’s permit and 62 others were canceled in what remains the biggest scandal to engulf the forestry sector since the end of the Liberian Civil War (1989-2003).
Delayed payments
Amid these violations, UFC has not lived up to the agreement it signed with Sehzueplay, another legal reason for the cancelation of its contract. The company owes the community land-rental fees and an unspecified amount from logs it has harvested in the 6,890-hectare woodland, according to Wobuah. In addition to the school building and leadership quarter in that illegal deal with ILC, UFC has failed to pave a 19-kilometer road, provide drinking water sources and an annual US$4,000 for scholarships.
Official records of the company’s payments corroborate the community’s account. UFC owes both the community and the Liberian government US$155,000, according to the joint implementation committee of the VPA. That is the second-highest debt owned by a company operating in a community forest. Only Liberia Tree and Timber Trading Company (LTTC) has more, US$269,007.
Nanleh Vaye, a member of Sehzueplay’s leadership says UFC has had struggles with equipment. He tells us that disgruntle workers of the company months earlier stole parts from its earthmovers in an apparent disagreement over wages. We see four of the machines parked in the area: two at its office in Korlay and two others on the route leading to the logs. They look like they have not moved for a long time.
“They have not sold one piece of logs from that forest,” Vaye says. “We agreed to give them chance until they can sell.”
But you can sense the general frustration over the UFC among villagers. They have known about Kruah’s ownership of UFC but had thought it would work in their interest as a lawyer and native of Sehzueplay.
“Cooper Kruah said he wanted jobs for Doe Administrative District,” one villager says. UFC has held several mining claims predominantly in this area, the focus of our next investigation on Kruah’s illegal businesses.
“He’s [a] shareholder of the community and legal advisor for the community,” says another, “but he takes the company over us.”
The Forestry Development Authority (FDA), did not grant The DayLight an interview on the company’s illegal operations. We made the first request in a letter on the 27th of last month and followed up with an email more than two weeks after. Managing Director Mike Doryen had said in a phone conversation, “Rest assured, we will take the appropriate action. I will not protect any official of government who breaks the law.”
This story was a production of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ).
A pile of logs abandoned by Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited
Top: Some of the logs Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited abandoned at its sawmill in Zorzor, Lofa County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
By James Harding Giahyue
Editor’s Note: In this second part of a series on Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited, we reveal how the Singaporean logging company abandoned a large number of logs in Lofa and Grand Bassa.
But it has abandoned about 2,500 logs it cut within that period, including logs the company illegally harvested, further investigation The DayLight conducted into the firm’s operations discovered. Around a fifth of the logs have already decayed.
Legally, logs are abandoned when they are left unattended between 15 and 180 days, depending on their location and the result of a three-month government-run inquiry. That means even logs Sing Africa felled in December last year, the latest of its production, are abandoned.
Our calculations of the company’s official production and export records between 2019 and last year show that it has 1,426 logs that have not been exported. Having only obtained production and shipment data in volume between 2017 and 2018, we estimated the difference of 10,761 cubic meters to be 1070 logs.
The logs are scattered at different locations. Most of them are in the company’s sawmill in Balagwalazu, with some in its log yards on the Gbarnga-Lofa highway and in Grand Bassa County.
We counted about 500 woods—several with Sing Africa markings—in a large open field in Buchanan, all of which have already decayed. Their remnants created sponge-like coatings everywhere as if the area were a graveyard for trees. You could take the cawing of birds that pierced the quietude of the deserted area for a eulogy.
“It’s not even good for charcoal now,” said one woman, who did not want to be named due to safety reasons.
The members of the leadership of Bluyeama Community Forest, who monitor the company and have records of all its operations, corroborated our findings. Gayflorson Korballah, one of Bluyeama’s leaders, pointed out huge piles of logs that had been harvested in 2017 and 2018. Alexander Songu, the head of the leadership, said most of the ones in the log yard had been harvested in 2019.
We traced some of the logs to the company’s official production records from their tracking numbers.
Tracking logs is a major component of postwar forestry reform in Liberia. Every tree felled must have an identification number that can be used to track logs from harvest to export.
The illegal logging and the failure of the company to pay the community its benefits have left locals frustrated. Since 2009, villagers have had the right to manage their forests alongside the government. Bluyeama, a 49,444 hectare woodland in the Zorzor District bordering Gbarpolu, was certified in 2011.
Following a difficult relationship with Ecowood, a previous logging company, it signed an agreement with Sing Africa in January 2016. But the company has not lived up to its promises. It owes both the Liberian government and the community US$121,271, according to the record of a meeting of players in the forestry industry on the implementation of Liberia’s Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union official records released in March earlier this year. That is one of the highest debts any company owes in the entire forestry sector.
Loss of Revenue
The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has known about the abandoned-logs issue since, at least, two years ago, evidence shows. In August 2020, an inquest by the agency found that Sing Africa abandoned 675 pieces of ekki wood (Lophira alata), an expensive, first-class log, in Buchanan. It also found that Star Wood—run by the Guptas, the Singaporean family that owns Sing Africa—left 465 logs at that same location.
Some abandoned logs in a log yard on the Gbarnga-Lofa highway, owned by Sing Africa Plantation Liberia Limited. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
“Logging contract holders are not doing much to minimize [the] incident of abandoned logs,” the report, leaked to us, said at the time. It said companies were harvesting logs without first securing sales contracts.
“Much-needed revenues that the national government requires for national development have been lost due to the unprecedented abandonment of assorted round logs by logging companies,” it added.
But it was only two months ago that the FDA started to take action. In April, it gave all companies a one-month period to declare the logs they had not shipped. Managing Director Mike Doryen told The DayLight a countrywide auctioning of abandoned logs would have begun at the end of that month, which did not happen.
“[Bluyeama] is an area of concentration for ourselves,” Doryen said. “Those who did not remove their logs as per the stipulated time, the lawyer will now go to the court to seek judicial actions to have the logs confiscated the auctioned.”
Doryen’s timeline for an auction was impossible. It takes several months of court orders and required notices for abandoned logs to be auctioned, according to the Regulation on Abandoned Logs, Timber and Timber Products. There were no records of such order at the circuit courts in Voinjama and Buchanan.
It was until earlier this month that the FDA began to inquire countrywide about abandoned logs, following three reports by The DayLight on the subject. Harris Zeah, the ranger responsible for Lofa, Bong and Margibi, was suspended and replaced a week after our report of illegal logging in Bluyeama. “Management’s action is predicated upon your consistent failure to meet work plan objectives, including your failure to adequately and timely address noncompliance issues in… the Bluyeama Community Forest,” Zeah’s suspension letter read.
Mukesh Gupta, Sing Africa’s CEO and head of the Guptas, denied any wrongdoing, blaming the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were loading by containers but when the Covid-19 hit, there was no buyer,” Gupta told The DayLight in an interview at the company’s Rehab office in Paynesville. “Covid-19 has damaged us so much. I think I should be supported, given the kind of investments we have made in the community.”
Though the pandemic shattered supply chains worldwide, especially in the Asian markets Sing Africa exports its logs, the company continued to cut trees. Between 2019 and 2020, it harvested 2,000 logs, according to official records. And while it only exported 189 logs during that time, it added 166 logs the following year. It did not apply for force majeure, a legal recourse companies take to address things like disease outbreaks, conflicts and natural disasters.
“We never cut the trees thinking that they would be abandoned. We cut the trees thinking that Covid-19 would go away soon. We are surprised that Covid-19 has stayed on for long,” Gupta added.
Sing Africa faces millions of United States dollars in fines and could be one of the heaviest in the Liberian logging industry’s history. Abandonment of woods in log yards, sawmills and ports carries a fine of three times the international prices of each class of logs.
The regulation was created to prevent waste of forest resources and to make sure companies harvest logs sustainably. It replaced an earlier regulation that narrowed the definition of abandonment to logs found outside a concession, lacking tracking barcodes. Its establishment in 2017 came amid a crackdown on illegal logging by importing countries, including the European Union.
Waste of the logs from Bluyeama adds to the Zorzor region’s forest loss. From 2002 to last year, the district lost 20.6-kilo hectares of humid primary forest, according to Global Forest Watch, which tracks deforestation worldwide. That number is one of the highest among community forests, according to a study by the FDA and the World Resource Institute, a global research charity. Tree cover loss refers to the removal of forest canopy by people or nature.
Piles of decayed logs at a log yard in Buchanan owned by Sing Africa. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
Zahn Dehydugar of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists contributed to this report.
The fund for the story was provided by Fern. The DayLight maintained complete editorial independence over its content.
Top: Members of the National Union of Community Forest Development Committee. The DayLight/Harry Browne
By the National Union of Community Forest Development Committees
“Around the world, more than 5 billion people lack meaningful access to justice. The Legal Empowerment Fund (LEF) is the first initiative dedicated solely to closing the global justice gap by investing in locally driven solutions and bringing community-level strategies to scale.
In January 2022, the LEF initiated its inaugural funding cycle with a month-long open call for proposals. We invited grassroots activists and organizations doing legal empowerment work anywhere in the world to apply for flexible funding.
The response was staggering. We received more than 4,800 applications from 153 countries. In all, groups requested more than $233 million in funding—a true testament to the overwhelming need for greater investment at the grassroots level.
After a comprehensive review and participatory selection process, 49 groups were chosen to make up the LEF’s first-ever cohort of grantees” (Funds for Global Human Rights – July 11, 2022).
The National Union of Community Forestry Development Committees is happy to be one of the 47 organizations to benefit from this fund. A grant totaling Forty thousand United States Dollars (US$40,000.00) will be provided to NUCFDCs in two installments. The first twenty thousand United States Dollars is already being provided to the NUCFDCs since the signing of the grant agreement in June 2022. This first installment is to cover June 2022 to May 2023 while the second installment will be provided once the first report is satisfied.
The fund provided to the NUCFDCs is a portion of a little over one hundred thousand United States Dollars project that the NUCFDCs has initiated with a focus on creating more awareness and strengthening the capacity of communities within the former Timber Sale Contract (TSC) Areas to acquire their Customary Land title.
The NUCFDCs is grateful to the Global Funds for Human Rights (GFHRs) for selecting the organization among thousands of organizations to be the amount the first grantees of the Legal Fund for Empowerment.
Though the fund provided is not the total funds the NUCFDCs needs to fully implement it desired project, which focuses on communities within the former Timber Sale Contract Areas by increasing their knowledge of Customary Land Acquisition and are able to initiate the processes leading to acquiring their customary land titles.
The NUCFDCs is appreciating GFHRs for this support and calling on other donors and partners to help/collaborate with the NUCFDCs to get the additional funds for a successful implementation of the project.
The project is targeting 101 communities within 11 Timber Sale Contract Areas in Gbarpolu, Grand Cape Mount, and Grand Bassa.
Top: The headquarters of the Forestry Development Authority in Whein Town, Paynesville. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
PAYNESVILLE -The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has removed two of its staff responsible for Lofa and River Cess, weeks after reports by The DayLight revealed companies illegally felled trees in the counties, with authorities doing nothing about the offense.
Harris Zeah, the regional forester, whose oversight covers Lofa, Bong and Margibi, and James Flomo, his counterpart for River Cess, Nimba, and Grand Bassa, were also suspended for a month each without pay.
“By directive of the Managing Director of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA), you are herewith suspended from work for one month without pay effective July 5, 2022,” the suspension letter, seen by The DayLight, read, misspelling Zeah as “Ziah.”
“Management’s action is predicated upon your consistent failure to meet work-plan objectives, including your failure to adequately and timely address noncompliance issues in Forest Management Contract (FMC) Area ‘A’ and the Bluyeama Community Forest,” the letter added. FMC Area A is a large-scale logging agreement between the Liberian government and the Alpha Logging and Wood Processing Company in Lofa and Gbarpolu.
Zeah is due to report to the headquarters of the FDA in Whein Town, Paynesville on the eighth of next month for his new assignment, according to the communication.
His suspension and replacement come just over a week after an investigation by The DayLight uncovered Sing Africa Plantation Limited, a Singaporean-owned logging company, harvested an estimated US$2.2 million worth of logs outside its contract area in the Bluyeama Community Forest.
That report cited an FDA investigation that found forest rangers knew of the illegal harvesting as early as 2017 but had taken no action against the company.
Flomo received a one-month suspension as Zeah for his alleged failure to address the noncompliance issues in concessions under his control.
“You are to turn over your assigned vehicle and other FDA properties in your possession to the incoming regional forester who will be appointed,” Flomo’s suspension letter read.
That incoming regional forester has been named: Yea Neagor, who served as contract administrator of River Cess County.
“Congratulations to Forester Yei P. Neagor for her elevation to the position of regional forester-region III…,” FDA Managing Director Mike Doryen wrote in a Facebook post, 10 days after Flomo’s removal.
Neagor was cited by The DayLight to have discovered African Wood and Lumber Company did not obtain a permit before harvesting 550 logs in the Gbarsaw & Dorbor Community Forest in River Cess County. She had raised an alarm on the illegal felling months earlier but no actions were taken against the company.
“We are still working on that but the immediate action was to put stop to the company. As we speak that not working and they are not allowed to work,” Flomo had said.
Unauthorized harvesting is an offense in forestry whether “intentionally or negligently.” African Wood is required to pay a fine of twice the total value of the volume of each species of logs illegally harvested as per the world market prices, according to Regulation 118-17 on Confiscated Logs, Timber and Timber Products.
It was unclear whether the FDA has taken any action against African Wood and Sing Africa.
Top: Some of the logs forestry authorities say African Wood & Lumber illegally harvested. The DayLight/Emmanuel Sherman
By Emmanuel Sherman
NYORWEIN – On a sunny day in December 2020 while patrolling the Gbarsaw and Dorbor Community Forest in River Cess County, Yei Neagor overheard the sound of a chainsaw. She was shocked because, as the contract administrator of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) in the south-central county, she must have been aware if there were any legal logging operations there.
“It could be illicit small-scale loggers,” she said to herself. Or a logging company conducting an illegal operation.”
So, Neagor quickly hired a motorcycle taxi-rider and headed into the 21,230-hectare dusky woodland in the Nyorwein District forest to investigate. It turned out the loggers were from the African Wood & Lumber Company. It had signed a five-year agreement with Gbarsaw & Dorbor a year ago but did not obtain the FDA’s approval to harvest logs.
Three months after her investigation, Neagor ordered the men to stop and filed a report to the agency’s office in Buchanan, Grand Bassa, responsible for that region. The company has not resumed work ever since.
“They got some in the forest only a few pieces they have by the roadside,” Neagor told The DayLight in a mobile interview.
This reporter saw some of the logs not far from a footpath but did not reach the rest of the woods due to the inaccessibility of roads in that area at this time of the year.
African Wood’s illegal harvesting breaks the National Forestry Reform Law and the Code of Harvesting Practices. The legal frameworks require the company to first obtain a five-year plan and an annual operation plan, and a harvesting certificate before felling a single tree. In normal forestry practice, the five-year and annual operation plans are meant to guide a company’s harvesting. They provide scientific information on where and how loggers can cut trees, among other things. A harvesting certificate authorizes the company’s operations.
Some of the logs that African Wood & Lumber cut in Gbarsaw & Dorbor Community Forest. The DayLight/Varney Kamara
Both the law and code were created to help Liberia sustainably manage its forest, the largest remaining rainforest in the West African region. In 2006, the country has made a commitment to conserve 30 percent of its forest. Last year, it promised to halve its deforestation rate by 2030. It, however, lost 128,000 hectares of natural forest last year alone, according to Global Forest Watch, which tracks deforestation worldwide.
Gbarsaw & Dorbor reflects that grim picture. It lost 420 tree covers in 2017, according to a study by the FDA and the World Resource Institute, a global research nonprofit. Tree cover loss is the removal of tree canopy by people and nature, including bushfires.
No Punishment
There are no records that show the FDA has punished the company as mandated by law. James Flomo, FDA’s representative responsible for River Cess, Bassa and Nimba, had informed the institution’s headquarters in Paynesville about the illegal harvesting as early as September last year, according to a report he compiled on the matter at the time.
“We are still working on that but the immediate action was to put stop to the company. As we speak that not working and they are not allowed to work,” Flomo said. “Any other penalties that will come out as a result of the investigation will be reported in subsequent time.”
Mike Doryen, the Managing Director of the FDA, said he would get back to The DayLight this week. We will update the story once he does that. The FDA is yet to take legal actions against Sing Africa, the Singaporean company that harvested over 5,500 logs outside its concession in the Bluyeama Community Forest in the Zorzor District.
Unauthorized harvesting is an offense in forestry whether “intentionally or negligently.” African Wood is required to pay a fine of twice the total value of the volume of each species of logs illegally harvested as per the world market prices, according to Regulation 118-17 on Confiscated Logs, Timber and Timber Products. It was created in 2017 to compel companies to comply with logging legalities.
The FDA is required to obtain a court order to confiscate and auction the logs but it must first find out the total volume of the illegally harvested logs. As of now, only 26 of the woods have been scaled, according to a July 1 report by Neagor and Blamo Chea, another ranger.
The illegal harvesting is just the latest episode in the troubled relationship between African Wood and Gbarsaw & Dorbor. The company owes the community US$42,786 in scholarships and land rental fees, the community forest leadership told The DayLight. Colombo had blamed his company’s indebtedness to that community on illegal chainsaw millers. The company had been accused of abusing traditional shrines in the area, provoking the ire of villagers.
Samuel Vonziah, a community leader in the area, said the community would not take matters into its own hands.
“In the past, our people used traditional means but we are trained [in forestry laws and regulations],” said Vonziah. “We are appealing to the government to come to our aid.”
Top: Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah “relinquish” his stakes in Universal Forestry Corporation (UFC) to his son Prince Kruah. Picture Credit: Facebook/Emmanuel Fred
By James Harding Giahyue
MONROVIA – Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah has admitted being in a conflict of interest with his continued involvement with a company currently mining and logging in Liberia. He faces dismissal, fines, and imprisonment.
The Postmaster General established Universal Forestry Corporation (UFC) on September 9, 1986, with an initial 25 percent shares. That was reduced to five percent when the company amended its article of incorporation in 2007 and remains that way, The DayLight investigation found. However, Kruah claims there was an amendment to UFC’s article of incorporation in 2019, even though we confirmed the status of the document at the Liberian Business Registry less than 24 hours before our initial publication.
Kruah had denied us an interview on the matter when we contacted him in November last year. “Publish anything you want to,” the Minister said after we denied his request not to have the conversation off the record.
“I want to use this medium to set the record straight that there has been an amended article of incorporation to the Universal Forestry Corporation and I relinquished my share to my son [Prince Kruah]…,” Minister Kruah said in a statement on Sunday. “This amendment of the Article of Incorporation is the best evidence for the public.”
Prince Kruah has 15 percent of the company’s shares, according to a legal document Minister Kruah presented, seen by The DayLight. The rest are held by Edward Slangar, former advisor to the late President Samuel Doe (10 percent), Jin Kyung, a foreign national (70 percent) and Narayan Vasnani, another foreign national (5 percent).
While The DayLight is investigating Kruah’s claim, he is still in violation of the laws governing the two industries as well as the Liberian Constitution and the Code of Conduct for Public Officials, provisions of the statutes show.
Minister Kruah’s claim to have turned over his equity in UFC to his own son is still a violation of the Minerals and Mining Law of 2000. The law mandates officials of government to “dispose of such mineral right or place such mineral right in a blind trust.” A blind trust takes care of private investment interests without the interference of the owner.
Minister Kruah has benefited from UFC, at least up to the time he claimed to have surrendered his shares to his son. UFC has had 11 mining licenses since his appointment in February 2018, records of the Ministry of Mines and Energy show.
Of the nearly one dozen UFC mining licenses, 10 are for semi-industrial-scale gold mining, prospecting, and dealer licenses, and the other is a diamond broker license. Four of these permits are still active. The company operates mines and dealerships in Montserrado, Grand Bassa and Nimba.
The company produced 16.85 kilograms of gold, valued at US$313,525 in the 2018-2019 fiscal year, according to the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI). It was one of the biggest contributors to the mining sector that year. From that period to last year, it paid the government US$99,545, according to the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA).
Under the mining law, Kruah faces a US$2,000 fine, a 24-month prison term, or both penalties if convicted of the offense.
The DayLight has reached out to the Ministry of Mines and Energy on the matter. We will update this report once it makes a statement on the Kruah’s illegal involvement in UFC.
‘Influence and control’
UFC has an agreement with Sehzueplay Community Forest in Nimba County, which was signed on January 30, 2020.
Kruah so-called relinquishment of his shares to his son also breaks the National Forestry Reform Law. That law compels an official of government to transfer ownership of the “entity outside the person’s influence and control, such as an unrelated individual or a blind trust…”
In fact, the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) approval of that deal breaches the Ten Core Regulations, the detailed rulebook of the logging industry. Regulation 103-07 in particular disqualifies companies whose shareholders are relatives of members of the government for logging licenses.
The shareholders’ page of Universal Forestry Corporation’s article of incorporation shows 15 percent shares for Prince Kruah, the son of the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cooper Kruah.
The Managing Director of the FDA Mike Doryen told The DayLight in a mobile phone interview that the agency was investigating the matter. “Rest assured, we will take the appropriate action,” Doryen said. “I will not protect any official of government who breaks the law.”
Conflict of interest carries a fine between US$10,000 and up to three times the sum Kruah has received from his equity in UFC, or a prison term of up to 12 months, according to the forestry law.
It is not the first time that the Kruah-associated UFC has violated forestry legal frameworks. It was involved in the notorious Private Use Permit (PUP) Scandal, in which an estimated 2.5 million hectares of forests—or 23 percent of the country’s landmass—was illegally awarded to logging companies. A government-backed inquest found the company broke the law in different instances while logging in Geetroh, Butaw District of Sinoe County between 2010 and 2012. That investigation found that UFC did not have an environmental permit or a certificate to harvest trees and that it paid community benefits into a personal account. UFC’s PUP and 62 others were canceled and a moratorium remains in place on the permit.
The Kruahs’ stakes in UFC are also a breach of the Code of Conduct, which defines conflict of interest as “when a public official, contrary to official obligations and duties to act for the benefit of the public, exploits a relationship for personal benefit.” Under this law, he faces a fine, suspension and dismissal, among other penalties.
The Code of Conduct has its roots in the Liberian Constitution, which says, “No person, whether elected or appointed to any public office, shall engage in any other activity, which shall be against public policy, or constitute [a] conflict of interest.”
The DayLight is running a three-part series on UFC that also focuses on the company’s other illegalities and failure to pay communities’ benefits.
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