A signboard at the Gheegbarn #1 Community Forest in Compound Number Two, Grand Bassa County, the setting for perhaps forestry’s largest scandal in the last decade. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
By James Harding Giahyue
BUCHANAN, Grand Bassa County – “The challenges in community forestry are self-explanatory. The companies will not perform. There will be some breaches by the community for tempering with the forest.”
Jefferson Zoegbeh, the secretary general of Gheegbarn #2 Community Forest’s executive committee in Grand Bassa County, speaks at a recent meeting in Buchanan. Over 50 community land and forest leaders brainstormed conservation possibilities. Gathering from the west-central county and River Cess next door, they discussed ways rural people could benefit from their forests rather than logging.
It has been some 15 years since logging was reintroduced in community forests following the end of over a decade of Liberia’s bloody civil wars. Though postwar forestry guarantees communities’ benefits, locals have gained little from dozens of logging contracts countrywide, covering 2.3 million hectares.
Official records show that of the 186 logging companies that have existed since 2009, just four or five are active. According to a recent report, they owe communities affected by large-scale concessions US$21 million.
The meeting was the second of a series of community-based consultations, the the previous held in Ganta, Nimba County. The events’ organizers intend to incorporate communities’ views—and a report—into a proposal to the Liberian government early next year.
“The best way for communities to get their benefits is to reserve their forest,” says Piyigar Gaybeon, Zuzohn Community Forest’s chief officer in the same region as Gheegbarn #2. Zuzohn signed a contract with the Chinese-owned Booming Green, which was terminated by mutual consent. However, the company did not settle its debt to locals, including contractual projects before pulling out.
“If we can get anything from any company to reserve the forest, we will agree. We need the generation to come and meet the forest there.”
Organizers seek locals’ views on three ways they can benefit from conservation. The first is performance-based, where they get paid for a specific forest area that is easily measurable. The second is direct funding, which empowers communities without a third party and is less bureaucratic. And the third is enterprise development, where communities’ alternative livelihood programs are funded to keep locals away from the forests.
Silas Siakor, the country manager of Dutch NGO IDH and one of the organizers, explains that the idea is to enhance communities’ sense of forest ownership and management.
“By protecting their resources, they can access funds tied to conservation ownership,” said Siakor. “For example, payments linked to forest management should be transparently managed within community bank accounts, fostering a sense of collective responsibility and preventing misuse.
The idea is to balance conservation with community needs.”
Community forest leaders at a conservation workshop in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
Locals did not dwell on REDD+ or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, which activists have warned against. They also avoided carbon credits, trading and markets for which Liberia is still developing policies and legal frameworks.
Ziadue, a landowning River Cess clan, has its own experience with carbon. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency shut a deal between the clan and a company over alleged bribery.
But that glitch is nothing compared to the logging nightmares Ziadue and its neighbors—Teekpeh, Gbarsaw and Dorbor—have experienced. Ziadue seeks termination of a logging contract for a forest it shares with Teekpeh, while loggers fled Gbarsaw and Dorbor after illegally harvesting 550 logs in 2020. These experiences have inspired locals here to look to conservation.
“We the leaders of Ziadue, Teekpeh, Gbarsaw and Dorbor, have decided to get into conservation and are united. This way, we can get benefits and develop our communities,” says Emmanuel Marcus Roberts, CLDMC Chairman of Ziadue Clan’s community land development and management committee.
Caution
The community leaders at the event, including Kennedy Kaiuway of Gheegbarn #2, are convinced that his community should run one of the three workable conservation programs.
“That will be better for us than for one man to come to our forest, ship his US$10 million [worth of] logs, and we are left destitute,” says Kaiuway. A company called L&S Resources Inc. deserted the 12,000-hectare Gheegbarn #1, leaving behind debts, abandoned logs and unfulfilled projects.
Zoegbeh shares Kaiuway’s views but urges rural people to tread with caution. “This is a new approach. For us to know it, we have to investigate and do due diligence on it,” says Zoegbeh.
Like Zoegbeh, Paul Kahn Jr., the chief officer for Gheegbarn #1 Community Forest, has doubts in conversation and believes logging can still work.
Bordering Gheegbarn #2, Gheegbarn #1 has seen perhaps the worst forestry scandal in the last decade. A Ministry of Justice Investigation found that the FDA had awarded the West African Forest Development Incorporated (WAFDI) 14,000 hectares, exporting thousands of the illegal logs.
Amid the illegal activities, WAFDI did not pay locals their fair share of logging resources. Paul Kahn Jr., Gheegbarn #1’s chief officer, puts the debt at US$193,000 in project fees, US$3,125 in land rental and, an unspecified amount in harvesting. Kahn’s predecessors are accused of mismanaging US$200,000. There has been no work there since a community protest last December.
“I think it can change [a lot] of things in the communities,” says Kahn. He had been elected to his post last month after leading the protest.
“Train officials of the community forest. Raise more awareness in communities, making them understand how to manage their funds. The responsibilities of [members of the community forest leadership]. The responsibilities of the company.”
Top: Dugbormar Kwekeh, a member of Gheegbarn #1 Community Forest tells European envoys about challenges with commercial logging in that part of Liberia in a March meeting. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
By Emmanuel Sherman
JIMMY DIGGS TOWN – A logging contract between a community forest and a Chinese-owned company in Compound Number Two, Grand Bassa County is perhaps forestry’s most troublesome agreement today.
But women on the leadership of Gheegbarn #1 Community Forest, which has a contract with West African Forest Development Incorporated (WAFDI), desire to continue their roles as elections draw near.
“We will be willing to work again if elected because we want to develop our place,” says Dugbormai kwekeh a member of Gheegbarn’s community assembly (CA). She and other women spoke in the Bassa language through an interpreter.
“We want our children to go to school, we don’t want them to be like us,” Kwekeh added.
Elections for a new corps of officers for the community’s forestry leadership are slated later this year.
Every five years, a forest community elects new members to its community assembly, which represents towns and villages that own the forest. Members of the new assembly then elect officers of its executive committee, the highest decision-making body in community forest governance. The assembly also elects members of the community forest management body (CFMB), which runs the affairs of the community forest. The CFMB tenure ranges from two to five years. The Community Rights Law of 2009 with Respect to Forest Lands requires at least a slot for a woman on the CFMB.
Oretha Toway, a member of the CFMB hopes to serve another term. “If appointed again, I will help the new leadership to build the community,” says Toway. “We don’t have any school, hospital.”
Illegal Logging
Gheegbarn’s trouble began from the very beginning in 2018. The FDA illegally approved the community’s Forest agreement with WAFDI with a lifespan of seven years, not 15 as required by law.
After that, the FDA authorized WAFDI harvest of more than three times the size of the forest as the law mandates. It took over three years for the Ministry of Justice to discover the scandal in an investigation.
The ministry later reprimanded FDA, SGS, the firm that created Liberia’s timber-tracking system, and WAFDI for breaking forestry laws and regulations.
The scandal tore off the roof of the FDA and the towns and villages of Gheegbarn. Logging activities in Gheegbarn were halted for nearly a year. FDA board of directors asked President George Weah to dismiss several senior managers of the agency. That did not happen but a major reshuffle took place. Gheegbarn and WAFDI have retroactively signed a new contract for 15 years.
The women-member of Gheegbarn are aware of the impacts of the scandal on the community, including the over-exploitation of the forest in the last three years. (WAFDI exported 29,104 cubic meters of round logs during that time, according to the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, citing FDA figures). However, it motivates them more.
(L-R) Dubormai Kwekeh, Oretha Toway and Markoni Geezee, members of Gheegbarn Community Forest leadership. The DayLight/Emmanuel Sherman
“I will agree to serve as a member of the assembly, provided there will still be logs in the forest,” says Etta Diggs an assembly member.
The women want to cancel the agreement with WAFDI because it has not lived up to the agreement.
By now, WAFDI should have constructed two schools, connected four farm-to-market roads, and 10 handpumps by now and employed 60 percent of its workforce from Gheegbarn.
“We don’t want the company anymore. They brought poverty on us,” Kwekeh adds. She had made the same point when EU ambassadors visited the community back in March. Kwekeh’s comments are backed by the law, as villagers can choose to cancel contracts with companies.
But amid the rigmarole with WAFDI, Gheegbarn also has an internal wrangle, which the women also want to address. The executive committee chair Robert Zeogar and the secretary to the CFMB Larry Tuning are at loggerheads with the chief officer of the CFMB Junior Wesseh, according to Wesseh and the women. Efforts to speak to Tuning and Zeogar on the issue did not materialize. Both men were not present during this reporter’s two-day stay in the area and their phones were off.
Wesseh, Zeogar and Tuning are signatories to the account, contrary to the community rights regulation. The regulation mandates the chief officer, the treasurer another authorized community member approved by the assembly.
“The EC chair [Zeogar] and CFMB secretary [Tuning] have been making unauthorized withdrawals with alerts coming to the CFMB chief officer [Wesseh],” says Jonathan Yiah. Yiah’s NGO, the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), works with Gheegbarn’s leadership.
Markoni Geezee, a member of the assembly would only serve another term given that Tuning and Zeogar are replaced. She accuses the duo of enriching themselves at the expense of the community.
“We walked till our slippers cut along the way for the company to come but now we are the losers,” says Geezee. “You only have a few people getting rich from the forest.”
Gheegbarn #1 Community Forest has been a scene of forestry’s biggest scandals in a decade. The DayLight/James Harding Giahyue
Funding for this story was provided by the Foundation for Community Initiatives (FCI). The DayLight maintained complete editorial independence over its content.
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).
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