Top: A drone shot of a Greenville, Sinoe County beach. The DdayLight/Derick Snyder
By Varney Kamara
MONROVIA – Recently on Spoon Talk, Moriah Yeakula-Korkpor, an executive of the Alternative National Congress, claimed that President Joseph Boakai signed several bogus concessions while serving as vice president during the 2000s and 2010s. Ambulah Mamay, another panelist on the show, disputed Korkpor’s claim, prompting this fact-check.
“The Ellen Johnson Sirleaf government, with Boakai serving as Vice President, signed 66 bogus concessions, heavily criticized by the public. He signed them,” said Mrs. Korkpor.
Mr. Mamey disagreed. “There have never been 66 bogus concession agreements in Liberia, and there are no bogus concessions signed in Liberia,” he said.
To fact-check both comments, The DayLight analyzed Korkpor’s claim by breaking down her use of the phrase “66 bogus concessions” into two parts, using official documents. First, we fact-checked whether the figure was correct as it constituted a significant part of her claim, and then looked up the remaining phrase “bogus concessions.”
We determined whether Mrs. Korkpor’s claim could be traced to any public or official records, an essential principle for fact-checking. After a thorough search, we found that her statement was based on an audit report by the London-based Moore Stephens (now Moore Global), commissioned by the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI) in November 2012 and published in May 2013.
The audit covered the forestry, agriculture, mining, and oil/gas sectors between 2009 and 2011, assessing the legal compliance of the processes through which the contracts were awarded.
What did we find
Our fact-check found Korkpor’s claim that two out of 66 concessions were “bogus” to be incorrect. The audit report established that 68 concessions, contracts, and licenses were awarded. Of that number, only six were compliant, 25 were partially compliant, 35 were non-compliant, and two had limitations of scope.
Moore Stephens defined “Compliant” where it “did not note several instances of non-compliance.” It defined “partially compliant” as “when the instances of non-compliance encountered were not material to the extent that the whole process was deficient.” It defined non-compliant as “major departure from relevant legislation,” and “limitations of scope” where Moore Stephens did not receive documents on the award process.
Those findings establish that Mr. Mamey’s counterclaim against Mrs. Korkpor is correct. There were 68 contracts, not 66; and six compliant contracts, not two.
Also, Mr. Mamey’s rebuttal of Mrs. Korkpor’s claim of bogus concessions was factual. In fact-checking this, The DayLight researched several references, including the Black’s Law dictionary, a world leader in legal terminology. It defined “bogus” as “anything phony or fictitious.”
That definition did not align with Moore Stephens’ descriptions of “partially compliant” and “non-compliant,” the phrases relevant to the debate. Though the audit was conclusive about 64 problematic contracts, it does not necessarily mean they were bogus. For a concession, contract, or license to be declared bogus, there must be strong evidence of fabrication.
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