Top: GVL workers in Butaw, Sinoe County in 2023. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
By Esau J. Farr
MONROVIA – The Director General of the National Bureau of Concessions (NBC) Edwin Dennis says he is unaware the watchdog of the global oil palm industry found Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) liable for land grab, one of the landmark moments in Liberia’s postwar natural resource history.
In 2018, the Malaysia-headquartered RSPO established that GVL had planted on farmlands in Sinoe and Grand Kru without adjacent communities’ consent, desecrating sacred sites. The communities had filed a complaint against GVL five years earlier.
The RSPO then ordered GVL to seek the communities’ approval and participation in remapping its concession areas, activities the NBC was created to monitor and regulate.
“I haven’t seen the [Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil’s] report and I haven’t spoken to GVL on the RSPO’s report,” said Dennis in an interview. The interview was part of a DayLight series on the company, the largest in the country.
“We were not furnished copies of those reports from the RSPO,” Dennis added, though the document is available online.
Dennis, however, said the NBC was working to create memoranda of agreement, instead of the MoUs. This would help the institution enforce concession agreements.
But time may not be in Dennis’ favor as he said his tenure would end this week. He was appointed in March 2020 by then-President George Weah after the resignation of Gregory Coleman, the current Inspector General of the Liberia National Police.
