conversation with Tolo

Happy 4th Birthday, our sweet Angel Destine Tolo! 🎉🎂💖
Today, we celebrate the joy, love, and happiness you bring into our lives every single day. You are truly our little “daddy photocopy,” and we smile every time we see your beautiful face shining with innocence and love.
At just 4 years old, you have already filled our hearts with so much pride and laughter. Watching you grow is the greatest blessing we could ever ask for. May your life always be filled with happiness, good health, and endless love.
Keep shining bright, our precious Angel. The world is yours to explore, and we will always be right here cheering you on.
With all our love,
Mummy Esther ❤️ and Daddy Tolo

Understanding Treason Under Legislative Rules and the Constitution
By Alphanso Tolo
Treason is one of the most serious offenses recognized in any democratic system, including the Republic of Liberia. It strikes at the very foundation of national security and governance. Within both the Constitution and the standing rules of the House of Representatives of Liberia, treason is addressed with strong legal and moral weight.
Under the Constitution of Liberia, treason is clearly defined. It generally involves acts such as levying war against the Republic, supporting enemies of the state, or engaging in activities intended to overthrow the government. The Constitution emphasizes that treason is not just about physical acts of war but also includes giving aid, comfort, or support to forces that threaten national stability.
In legislative settings, particularly within the House of Representatives, standing rules guide the conduct of lawmakers. While these rules may not define treason in full legal terms, they strictly regulate speech and behavior that could undermine the authority of the state. Statements made by lawmakers that incite violence, promote rebellion, or encourage unconstitutional actions may be interpreted as conduct bordering on treason, depending on their intent and impact.
Importantly, the Constitution also protects freedom of speech. However, this freedom is not absolute. Any statement—whether made in public, political gatherings, or legislative sessions—that calls for the violent overthrow of the government or supports enemies of the state can be considered a serious violation. In extreme cases, such statements may lead to charges of treason or related offenses.
The balance between free expression and national security remains delicate. Lawmakers are expected to express their views responsibly, ensuring that their words do not incite instability or conflict. The standing rules of the House reinforce discipline, respect, and loyalty to the Republic, ensuring that debates remain constructive and within constitutional boundaries.
In conclusion, treason under Liberia’s legal framework is both a constitutional and moral issue. While the Constitution defines the crime and its consequences, the House of Representatives’ standing rules serve as a preventive mechanism, guiding lawmakers to act in ways that uphold the integrity of the state. Understanding these provisions is essential for preserving democracy, maintaining peace, and ensuring responsible governance.

Happy 11th Birthday, our beautiful daughter Favor! 🎉🎂💖
Today, we celebrate the amazing young girl you are becoming. You bring so much joy, laughter, and love into our lives every single day. Watching you grow has been one of our greatest blessings, and we are so proud of you.
At 11 years old, you are smart, kind, and full of wonderful dreams. May this new age bring you happiness, success in school, good health, and endless reasons to smile. Never stop believing in yourself, and always remember how deeply you are loved.
Enjoy your special day to the fullest, our princess. You deserve all the happiness in the world!
With all our love,
Mom (Esther) ❤️ and Dad (Tolo) 💙

Good morning Monrovia breweries family (M.B.I) VOTE Hon. Sam K. MULBAH for chairman.come April 17,2026 .

Geopolitical Analyst and Human Right Advocate Fanta Kamara writes ✍️

UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
SOLD UNDERGROUND
Liberia's Legislature Auctioned the Nation's Subsoil, One Pickup Truck at a Time
THE SAGA OF MINERAL RICH, NATION POOR| The Documented Story of How Liberia's
Lawmakers Sold a Country They Were Elected to Protect
By Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | April 2026
On the morning of April 11, 2026, Liberia's Vice President, Jeremiah Kpan Koung, walked through the gold room at
the Bea Mountain Mining Company facility in Kinjor, Grand Cape Mount County. He asked a simple question: why
were there no Liberians working in that room? The manager deferred the answer for a private conversation later.
Koung described himself as numb. He had just been told that the mine produces approximately 900 kilograms of gold every month. At current gold prices of US$152,000 per kilogram, that is US$1.65 billion leaving Liberian soil every year from a single mine. Internal documents circulating alongside the visit place the actual figure at 1,271 kilograms per month, equivalent to US$2.33 billion annually. The most recent official government figure, published
by the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in its 16th Report covering calendar year 2023, recorded 12,146 kilograms for the entire year, valued at US$653.6 million. The company's own lower admission to the Vice President is two and a half times what LEITI officially reported. The documents, if accurate, place the real figure at
3.6 times the LEITI number. That literally, the size of a country.
Now hold that against what the country actually receives. Between 2007 and 2023, importing nations in Europe, Asia, and the Gulf recorded receiving US$7.8 billion worth of Liberian minerals. Over those same sixteen years, mining companies officially paid US$844 million to the Government of Liberia. That gap, $6.956 billion, is what this article is about. A separate but related figure from the same Forest Trends assessment adds a further dimension:
importing nations recorded US$2.7 billion more in Liberian mineral imports than Liberia itself logged as exports.

That means minerals departed Liberian territory without even being declared, so much for the Kimberly Process.
The $6.956 billion measures what the state never received from what it knew left. The undeclared exports are on top of that. Together, these numbers describe a country systematically looted by its own contractual framework,
operated by companies that self-report what they extract, and ratified by a legislature, comfortably lying in bed with them, this article will name by individual vote.
If the Bea Mountain production gap operates across ArcelorMittal, China Union, and Western Cluster at any comparable scale, then the $6.956 billion is not the ceiling of the problem. It is the floor.

THE LEGAL SCAFFOLD, WHO WROTE THE RULES, AND FOR WHOM

Before any company could be blamed for taking what Liberia offered, someone had to design the offering. That work was done in three stages, by three different actors, across half a century. The result was a legal architecture so favorable to foreign extractors that the companies operating under it today did not have to cheat the system. They
simply used it as written.
The first stage was 1956, when President William V.S. Tubman enacted the Natural Resources Law under his Open Door Policy, a deliberate strategy to attract foreign capital by minimizing the state's claims on whatever that capital extracted. Tubman's Liberia was not unusual for its era — post-colonial governments across the continent made
similar bargains — but he established the foundational premise that would survive every subsequent revision: the state as landlord, the foreign company as operator, the host community as an afterthought in the contract.
The second, and by far the most consequential, stage came in 2000 when President Charles Taylor enacted the Minerals and Mining Law that still governs Liberia's extractive sector today. Taylor was subsequently convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone on eleven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. That context matters
because the law he authored was not designed by a government trying to maximize what its citizens received from their mineral wealth. It was designed by a government financing an active military insurgency partly through resource exploitation, and that purpose is legible in the law's architecture. The 2000 statute established the Class A, B, and C mining license framework, the 25-year renewable Mineral Development Agreement mechanism, and
crucially a provision allowing each individual MDA to function as its own legal universe, carved out from the general Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026
UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL

provisions of the Mining Law itself. What that means in practice is that ArcelorMittal, China Union, and Bea
Mountain could each negotiate bespoke terms — their own tax rates, their own royalty structures, their own stabilization clauses freezing those terms in place — that the general law would otherwise never permit. The mining
law is patterned on the Australian system, itself designed to facilitate corporate access rather than sovereign capture.
Taylor's contribution was to make that system negotiable in private, company by company, without any standardized floor.
The third stage arrived in the aftermath of the second civil war. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in Accra on August 18, 2003 required the establishment of a Contract and Monopolies Commission to oversee the transitional government's concession activity. From that mandate grew the Public Procurement and Concessions Act of 2005, the law that governs how Liberia's concession agreements are tendered and structured. The PPCA was not drafted by Liberians working from national principle. It was, in the documented words of the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission's own institutional history, 'facilitated with the technical and financial support of the World Bank,' co-developed with the Office of the European Commission in Liberia, and endorsed by
both before the transitional government adopted it. The World Bank and European Commission in 2003 Liberia were not disinterested parties. Their mandate was economic stabilization and the restoration of investor confidence, which meant the framework they helped write was investor-facing by design. In 2006, the same year ArcelorMittal was distributing pickup trucks to the Legislature to secure its own ratification, the World Bank produced a report
on the ArcelorMittal contract. It did not flag the vehicle distribution as a governance failure requiring intervention.
Efforts to reform the 2000 Mining Law have been underway since 2012, supported by the World Bank and Germany's GIZ. The reform aimed to switch from the negotiated MDA carve-out model to a standardized license regime with defined royalty floors and equity minimums. It has never been completed. The Ebola epidemic
disrupted the timeline. Political will did the rest. And even if the reform were enacted tomorrow, the stabilization clauses embedded in ArcelorMittal's, China Union's, and Bea Mountain's existing agreements would immunize all
three companies from its application for decades. The Legislature ratified those clauses. It ratified its own incapacity to regulate.
MINERAL LAW TIMELINE & AUTHORSHIP
YEAR INSTRUMENT AUTHORED BY / KEY FLAW
1956 Natural Resources Law Pres. Tubman, 'Open Door Policy': foreign investor primacy; community irrelevant 2000 Minerals & Mining Law (MML) Pres. Charles Taylor (convicted war criminal); Australian model; MDA carve-outs let companies override general law; stabilization clauses freeze regulatory
environment per-company
2003 Comprehensive Peace
ECOWAS/UN: created Contract & Monopolies Commission; triggered PPCA
Agreement, Art. XVII
drafting
2005 Public Procurement &
World Bank (financial & technical lead) + European Commission + NTGL,
Concessions Act
investor-confidence mandate; no maximization of state revenue
2009 LEITI Act Legislature under international pressure (EITI), disclosure required; Liberia first
African EITI-compliant nation
2010 Mineral Policy; Exploration
Sirleaf admin + World Bank/EC/UNDP, complemented 2000 law; no royalty
Regs; PPCA Restatement
reform
2012 to
Mining Law Reform
World Bank + Germany's GIZ, aimed to end MDA carve-outs; stalled by Ebola,
now
(INCOMPLETE)
political will; existing MDAs' stabilization clauses immunize all current
concessionaires from any new law
ARCELORMITTAL, THE ORIGINAL ARCHITECTURE OF EXTRACTION
The model was established before Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office. On August 17, 2005, the National Transitional
Government of Liberia, led by Chairman Gyude Bryant, signed the original Mineral Development Agreement with
Mittal Steel, later renamed ArcelorMittal, granting a 25-year concession over Liberia's iron ore deposits. The war
had ended two years earlier. The country had no functioning institutions and no negotiating capacity. Mittal had
both. The terms reflected that imbalance: a five-year renewable tax holiday, royalty structures below international
norms, stabilization clauses insulating the company from any future Liberian legislation that might tighten its
obligations, and exclusive control over the Yekepa to Buchanan railway and the port at Buchanan — sovereign Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
infrastructure handed to a private multinational to operate alone, for its own commercial benefit, for a quarter
century. Global Witness, in its 2006 report 'Heavy Mittal?', described what had been negotiated without
euphemism: Liberia had ceded sovereign powers over a nonrenewable resource to a foreign corporation in a manner
that created a state within a state.
When President Sirleaf sought renegotiation in 2006, ArcelorMittal's opening gesture was not a revised financial
offer. It was 100 Toyota Hilux DXD4 double-cabin pickups, distributed to all members of the 52nd National
Legislature. Sirleaf confirmed the vehicles were given at her request, to ease lawmakers' transportation burden. In
May 2007, following the distribution, the renegotiated MDA was ratified. The Legislature that had just accepted
100 vehicles from a company whose concession it was evaluating voted in favor. This was not a coincidence. It was
the transaction, conducted in public, defended by the head of state, and recorded by every newspaper in Monrovia.
The Legislature's Speaker at the time was Alex Tyler, who had replaced Edwin Snowe weeks earlier, after two
representatives, Samuel Bondo of B**g County and Saah Gbollie of Margibi County, each publicly admitted
receiving US$5,000 to vote Snowe out. The Legislature that ratified the 2007 ArcelorMittal deal was, by
documented admission of its own members, a legislature in which votes were purchased. The 2007 MDA extended
the concession to 2030, increased the investment commitment to US$1.5 billion, and abolished the tax holiday. It
did not change the structure of extraction: ore left Liberia unprocessed, steel was never made here, and the profit
went to Luxembourg.
Between 2009 and 2022, ArcelorMittal generated over US$1.21 billion in revenues from Liberia's iron ore. The
government received US$138 million — about eleven percent (that number could be grossly understated by 3x). In
2019 alone, ArcelorMittal's exports represented nearly half of Liberia's total national exports. In December 2025,
LEITI's 16th Report identified suspicious transactions involving ArcelorMittal Liberia and the Liberia Revenue
Authority and referred them to the Anti-Corruption Commission. That investigation has not concluded. In January
2026, President Joseph Boakai submitted a Third Amendment extending ArcelorMittal's concession to December
2050. Senator Nya D. Twayen of Nimba County, who had spent years confronting the company in legislative
chambers, described the US$200 million signature bonus attached to the deal with characteristic precision: it is
part of what ArcelorMittal already owes Liberia and has never paid.
ARCELORMITTAL REVENUE CAPTURE (2009 TO 2022)
11 CENTS PER DOLLAR, MORE LIKE 3 CENTS
$1.21B generated in Liberia; $138M returned, LEITI 15th Report | 3rd Amendment: ~22 senators FOR, 3 abstained
(Twayen, Duncan, Dopoe)
CHINA UNION, SIXTEEN YEARS OF ADMITTED BREACH
The Kakata-to-Haindi Road still has not been paved. This is not a minor compliance gap. It is one of the central
obligations China Union Investment B**g Mines Company, Ltd., accepted when the Sirleaf administration signed
its Mineral Development Agreement on January 19, 2009. The company was granted a 25-year concession over the
B**g Range iron ore deposits at a declared project value of US$2.6 billion. In exchange, it agreed to build that road.
It also agreed to construct a hydropower plant on the St. Paul River, build and staff a hospital, maintain a workforce
that was 70 percent Liberian, and contribute US$3.5 million annually into Social Development Funds for
communities in B**g and Margibi counties. The MDA was ratified by the 52nd Legislature. These obligations are
in the text of that agreement. None of them have been met.
In 2014, China Union suspended its mining operations. It has never fully resumed them. By October 2025, Senator
Prince Kermue Moye, the Chair of B**g County's Legislative Caucus, stood in the Senate chamber and disclosed
that China Union had failed to pay its Social Development Fund contributions for an entire decade. The unpaid
balance owed to B**g County alone exceeded US$11 million. In April 2024, the company's own public relations
officer stood at a community event in Kakata and admitted, on record, to eight years of failure to meet the company's
corporate social responsibilities. An eight-year confession. Not a rumor, not an opposition allegation — a company
official speaking publicly about his own employer's non-compliance. The Legislature received that admission and
issued no notice of termination.
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
In December 2025, Representative Foday Fahnbulleh of B**g County's District Seven stopped one of China Union's
trains. He physically halted it as a protest against sixteen years of broken promises. The company wrote back within
days, conceding his concerns were valid, and asked for 45 to 60 more days to begin remediation. In February 2026,
residents of Fuamah District and Larkayta Township in Margibi blocked the railway themselves, felling trees across
the tracks, burning tires, placing bricks on the rails. A minister arrived to negotiate. China Union received another
deadline. The Legislature that ratified this concession has held hearings, accepted letters, appointed joint
committees, and granted deadline after deadline. It has never served a notice of termination.
CHINA UNION SOCIAL FUND ARREARS, B**G COUNTY ONLY
$11M+ UNPAID (2015 to 2025)
Ten-year failure to pay $1.5M annual SDF, FrontPageAfrica / Sen. Moye, Oct. 2025 | Legislature: never moved to
terminate for breach
BEA MOUNTAIN, THE MIDNIGHT EXTENSION AND THE BILLION-DOLLAR
DISCREPANCY
Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, a subsidiary of Avesoro Resources, own by Turkish Billionaire, Mehmet Nazif
Günal, holds Liberia's largest commercial gold concession, operating since 2001 in Kinjor, Grand Cape Mount
County. For the entirety of its operational life, Liberia has received a royalty of 3 percent on net smelter returns, the
lowest defensible rate at which a sovereign state can participate in gold extraction from its own territory. The
government holds 10 percent non-dilutable equity, against which no dividend payment has ever been publicly
recorded.
The LEITI 16th Report recorded Bea Mountain exporting 12,146 kilograms of gold in 2023, valued at US$653.6
million, with the government receiving US$37.6 million. As established in this article's opening, those figures are
now in direct conflict with what company officials admitted to VP Koung on April 13, 2026 — and with internal
documents suggesting the actual figure is higher still.
Part of the discrepancy has a straightforward explanation. Gold traded at approximately US$53,000 per kilogram
in 2023. It now trades at approximately US$152,000 — a rise of 190 percent. The same 12,146 kilograms LEITI
recorded in 2023 would generate approximately US$1.85 billion at today's prices, consistent with the company's
admission to the Vice President. Is LEITI's complicity in its reporting or It is three years out of date in a country
where the gold price has nearly tripled and the most recent transparency report covers data from before that tripling.
What cannot be explained by price is the 41 percent gap between the reported 900 kilograms per month the
company admitted to the Vice President and the 1,271 kilograms that internal documents reportedly record. That
discrepancy, if accurate, represents US$680 million per year in gold that leaves Liberian soil without being declared
— and approximately US$20 million in annual royalties that Liberia may not be receiving, or is being pocketed by
legislators, which is why they
’ve remained mum.
With three years remaining on its original 25-year agreement, Bea Mountain applied in 2023 for an extension to
2051, another quarter-century at structurally identical terms. The Senate Joint Committee on Mines, Energy,
Natural Resources, and Environment, chaired by Senator Simeon Taylor of Grand Cape Mount County,
the host county of the mine, held a public hearing on August 29, 2023. One day later, on August 30, the full Senate
voted: 15 senators in favor, 5 against, zero abstentions. Rep. Joseph Kolleh of B**g County filed the motion; Rep.
P. Mike Jurry of Maryland County amended it to send to committee, but the outcome was predetermined. The
House Joint Committee Chair Clarence Massaquoi of Lofa County District 3 opened public hearings on September
4 with declared commitment to thorough review, requested six months of shipment records and employment
figures, and then watched the agreement pass in a late-night session on September 6 to 7, three days later, with 37
of 39 present Representatives voting in favor, before any committee report reached the floor. The extension to 2051
was ratified without the Legislature ever independently verifying what Bea Mountain had actually been producing,
exporting, or paying. Had it done so, using the gold price at the time of the extension vote in 2023, the discrepancy
between LEITI figures and plausible actual revenues would already have been visible. It chose not to look.
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
BEA MOUNTAIN: LEITI VS. ACTUAL (APRIL 2026)
$653.6M REPORTED (2023) vs. $1.65B to
$2.33B CURRENT
LEITI 16th Report (2023) | VP Koung visit April 13 2026: company admitted 900 kg/month = $1.65B/yr | Internal
documents: 1,271 kg/month = $2.33B/yr | Gold price up 190% since 2023 reporting period
IVANHOE ATLANTIC, THE $37 MILLION GHOST PAYMENT AND THE
CONFLICTED SENATE
The Ivanhoe Atlantic Concession and Access Agreement, valued at US$1.8 billion, is Liberia's most consequential
and most contested infrastructure deal of the past decade. Signed between the Government of Liberia, Société des
Mines de Fer de Guinée, and Ivanhoe Liberia Limited on July 5, 2025, the agreement grants Ivanhoe a 25-year right
to transport Guinean iron ore through the Yekepa to Buchanan railway and Port of Buchanan. It passed the House
of Representatives on December 11, 2025, and the Senate on December 18, 2025.
The agreement's passage cannot be evaluated without first establishing what preceded it. In 2022, Ivanhoe/HPX
transferred US$37 million to the Weah administration under a framework agreement the Liberian Legislature had
never ratified, a payment described by insiders as intended to prevent ArcelorMittal's Third Amendment from
advancing. The transaction was constitutionally irregular on its face: no legislative body approved the framework
under which it was made. Legal analysts writing for Insights Liberia in November 2025 documented that the
payment implicates both the anti-bribery and books-and-records provisions of the United States Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act, given Ivanhoe Atlantic's American-linked corporate structure. The U.S. Department of Justice has
opened no formal investigation. The $37 million is now cited by the ratified agreement itself as an 'already-paid'
component of the total concession payment, effectively laundering an extrajudicial payment through subsequent
legislative approval.
Compounding the structural opacity is the ownership architecture of Ivanhoe Atlantic's parent. Congressman John
Moolenaar, Chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote to Secretary of
State Marco Rubio in December 2025 warning that Chinese state-linked entities hold nearly 40 percent of the equity
in Ivanhoe Mines, including CITIC, wholly owned by China's Ministry of Finance and designated a national security
risk by the FCC, and Zijin Mining, one of Beijing's largest state-affiliated conglomerates. A deal marketed as
breaking the iron ore corridor's monopoly is, in corporate structure, a partial Chinese sovereign investment vehicle.
The Senate review process was itself a case study in institutionalized conflict of interest. Joint Committee Chair
Senator Saah H. Joseph of Montserrado County abruptly suspended two consecutive hearings before the first
substantive session was held on December 8, 2025, seven weeks after the agreement arrived from the House. The
Daily Observer reported that both Joseph and Committee Co-Chair Senator Numene T.H. Bartekwa of Grand Kru
County held trucking and haulage contracts with ArcelorMittal Liberia, valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars,
the same company whose rail monopoly the Ivanhoe agreement was designed to curtail. Neither senator responded
to formal written inquiries. Both were permitted to preside. Neither was recused.
The Senate vote on December 18, 2025, ultimately recorded 20 in favor, four abstentions, and one vote against. The
lone dissent was Senator Saah H. Joseph, the same senator who had delayed hearings and whose business
relationship with ArcelorMittal was publicly documented. His 'no' was not a principled stand for national
sovereignty. It was a commercial reflex. Senator Twayen of Nimba, who had demanded infrastructure
preconditions, was absent when the roll was called, his conditions having been ruled procedurally inadmissible.
Conspicuous among the 'yes' votes were four U.S.-sanctioned senators: Nathaniel F. McGill and Emmanuel Nuquay
of Margibi County; Albert T. Chie of Grand Kru; and Bill Twehway of Rivercess, all casting deciding votes on a
billion-dollar infrastructure agreement from which the United States itself had urged caution.
IVANHOE $37M PRE-RATIFICATION PAYMENT
CONSTITUTIONALLY IRREGULARITY
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
House: 38 FOR, 2 against (Dec 11 2025) | Senate: 20 FOR, 4 abstain, 1 against, sole 'no': Sen. Saah Joseph (AML
contractor) | 4 U.S.-sanctioned senators voted FOR, Insights Liberia, Nov. 2025
THE CONFLICT ECONOMY, HOW LEGISLATORS BECAME VENDORS,
CONSULTANTS, AND ACCOMPLICES
Mining concessionaires do not need to hand envelopes when they can instead become someone's largest client.
When a senator's private security firm depends on a company's payroll, when a committee chair's trucking fleet
moves that company's ore, the legislator who is supposed to subpoena the company's compliance records is the
same person who cannot afford to antagonize the entity that pays his invoices.
The mechanism has a name in governance literature: regulatory capture. In Liberia's extractive sector, it has names
attached to it. From Thomas Fallah to Amara Konneh.
Senator Saah H. Joseph of Montserrado County is the most documented case. As Chair of the Senate Joint
Committee on Transport, Investment, and Concessions, the body constitutionally positioned to scrutinize
ArcelorMittal's Third Amendment and the Ivanhoe Concession and Access Agreement simultaneously, Joseph was
reported by the Daily Observer to hold commercial trucking and haulage contracts with ArcelorMittal Liberia, with
fleets of buses and trucks hired by the company to transport workers and perform haulage functions within the
concession area. The contracts were valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. When the Ivanhoe agreement,
which would directly curtail AML's rail monopoly, arrived before his committee in October 2025, Joseph abruptly
suspended the first hearing. Then the second. The process stalled for seven weeks. He cast the sole 'no' vote on the
Senate floor when ratification finally occurred on December 18, 2025. He then voted in favor of ArcelorMittal's own
Third Amendment in January 2026, extending his principal commercial partner's concession to 2050. Both
positions tracked his commercial interest with mechanical precision.
Senator Numene T.H. Bartekwa of Grand Kru County, Co-Chair of the same Joint Committee, was separately
reported to hold logistics contracts with ArcelorMittal. He presided over the AML Third Amendment hearings,
described the deal as reflecting 'meaningful progress,' and voted for both AML's extension and, when the political
winds shifted, the Ivanhoe agreement as well. When his AML contract was reported by the Observer, Bartekwa
denied it at a press conference without producing documentation. He was not recused from either process.
The third documented case is structurally more insidious. Senator Momo Cyrus of Lofa County is the founder and
chief executive officer of SEGAL, Security Expert Guard Agency of Liberia, the primary private security contractor
for ArcelorMittal's Nimba County concession operations, employing over 3,500 Liberians across the company's
concession footprint. SEGAL's revenue, as Cyrus himself acknowledged in a 2022 communication, is '100 percent
client-driven,' and its largest client is AML. Cyrus chairs the Senate Committee on National Defense, Security,
Intelligence, and Veteran Affairs, the body responsible for oversight of security arrangements at precisely the
concession operations from which his private firm draws its income. When the Ministry of Labor and the Workers
Union of Liberia proposed unionizing private security personnel assigned to ArcelorMittal in September 2025,
Senator Cyrus intervened from the floor of the Senate to block the proposal, describing it as a 'security threat' and
pledging to stop it, protecting the labor conditions that keep his company's contract viable. He voted in favor of the
Ivanhoe agreement in December 2025, a vote that can be read as either a break from AML or a recognition that his
contract would survive regardless of who controls the rail. His firm's commercial survival has never, in any public
record, conflicted with his legislative conduct. That is not a coincidence. That is the system working as designed.
Senator Amara Konneh, who publicly championed the Ivanhoe agreement, abstained on the final vote. Analysts
attributed his reversal to longstanding relationships with senior ArcelorMittal figures. No public explanation was
offered or required.
What these arrangements produce is not conventional corruption, an envelope, a vote, a payment. They produce a
legislature constitutionally incapable of adversarial oversight. A senator cannot subpoena a company's compliance
records when that company is his largest client. A security firm owner cannot regulate the labor conditions of
workers assigned to his principal contractor. A logistics vendor cannot negotiate mineral royalties against the entity
that keeps his trucks loaded. The concessionaires have not merely bought votes. They have bought the institutional
capacity to govern them, and rented it back to the Liberian state at the price of every bad concession ratified since
2005.
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
VII. THE FORENSIC VERDICT, WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SAY
The numbers at the start of this article are not disputed. What they describe is not an accident of policy or a failure
of capacity. It is the predictable output of a legislature that has, across five successive bodies, ratified agreements it
was commercially incentivised not to scrutinise. It accepted 100 pickup trucks from a company whose concession it
was evaluating and voted one week later. It extended a gold concession in a midnight session without once verifying
what the mine had been producing. It permitted committee chairs with documented commercial contracts with
ArcelorMittal to preside over ArcelorMittal's own review. It has never, in twenty years of concession history,
terminated a single agreement for breach of a single obligation.
Bryant, Sirleaf, Weah, and Boakai signed the agreements. The Legislature ratified them, and more importantly,
failed to enforce them. Constitutional authority over natural resource concessions is legislative. So is the liability. A
legislature in which committee chairs overseeing a US$1.8 billion infrastructure agreement hold trucking contracts
with the company opposed to it, in which a senator's security firm is sustained by the company he regulates, is not
a legislature that has been corrupted from outside. It is a legislature that has been purchased from within.
Liberia is not a poor country. It has iron ore in Nimba, gold in Grand Cape Mount, diamonds in the central counties,
rubber across the western lowlands, and offshore petroleum that has barely been explored. What it does not have is
a government that has ever collected what those resources are worth. The ore leaves. The gold leaves. The profit
leaves. What stays is the damage: depleted aquifers, blocked railway tracks, communities without running water
alongside mines generating billions, and a legislative ledger full of concession votes cast by men whose trucks moved
the ore.
VIII. WHAT LIBERIA ACTUALLY GETS, THE DEAL TERMS, PLAINLY STATED
Every concession agreement ratified by the National Legislature contains revenue provisions described in the public
record as generous, competitive, and nationally beneficial. Below is what those provisions translate to in practice,
stated without qualification.
CONCESSION REVENUE TERMS AT A GLANCE
COMPANY ROYALTY
GOVT
INCOME TAX COMMUNITY FUND ACTUAL RECEIPT
RATE
EQUITY
(DOCUMENTED)
ArcelorMittal Liberia 4.5% of FOB
10% free
25% income tax
US$5M/yr to Nimba, B**g,
US$138M of US$1.21B
Buchanan price
carried interest
(Third
Grand Bassa (up from
generated (2009 to 2022)
(monthly, from
(undilutable);
Amendment,
US$3M); US$200K rail
= 11 cents per dollar.
Jan 2026); prior
no
2026)
oversight fee; US$500K
US$200M signature bonus
to 2007
documented
mining license fee from
paid January 2026.
amendment: 5-yr
dividend
2031
tax holiday
payments to
applied
state in 20
years
China Union B**g
3.25% when iron
Not publicly
Standard 30%
US$3.5M/yr Social
US$11M+ owed to B**g
Mines
ore price at or
documented.
CIT; first
Development Fund across
County alone as of
below
No dividend
shipment (2014)
B**g and Margibi counties.
October 2025. Operations
US$100/MT;
record.
yielded approx.
Unpaid since 2015.
suspended since 2014. No
3.5% at US$100
US$2.5M in all
infrastructure obligations
to US$125; 4%
tax revenues on
met.
at US$125 to
first cargo
US$150; 4.5% at
US$150 and
above. Exempt
from export
taxes, surtax,
and import
duties for first 25
years.
Bea Mountain
3% net smelter
10% free
Maximum 30%
Accumulated Community
LEITI 2023 (16th Report):
Mining (Avesoro)
return on gold,
carried interest
income tax cap
Development Fund;
US$37.6M from
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
COMPANY ROYALTY
GOVT
INCOME TAX COMMUNITY FUND ACTUAL RECEIPT
RATE
EQUITY
(DOCUMENTED)
silver, and
(2001 MDA);
US$250K per affected clan
US$653.6M exported
diamonds.
increased to
per year; increased in 2023
(5.8%). HOWEVER: VP
Maximum 5% on
15% in 2023
amendment
Koung visit April 13 2026
other minerals.
amendment.
reveals company
No
producing 900 kg/month =
documented
US$1.65B/yr at current
dividend
prices. Internal
payments.
documents: 1,271
kg/month = US$2.33B/yr.
LEITI figure appears 2.5 to
3.6x understated at
current gold prices.
Ivanhoe Atlantic
Rail access fee:
No equity
1.5% customs
US$1M/yr rising to US$5M
US$37M paid to Weah
(HPX)
US$1.95 per
stake. Transit
user fee on
over 5 years for Nimba,
administration in 2022
tonne falling to
arrangement
imports (CIF
B**g, Grand Bassa
under unratified
US$1.55 per
only.
basis)
framework. US$35M in
tonne as volume
staged payments on
rises. Cross-
ratification milestones.
border transit
Projected: US$60M/yr in
fee:
revenues over 25 years,
US$0.10/tonne.
per government estimates.
Customs transit
fee: flat
US$500K/yr. 15-
year stabilization
period locks all
fiscal terms.
These rates sit at the floor of what any resource-rich African nation accepts, and they are applied against export
values that the VP Koung visit of April 13, 2026 gives every reason to doubt.
WHAT AFRICA HAS WON, THE STANDARD LIBERIA HAS NOT MET
Every nation examined below is Liberia's peer: same continent, same multinational counterparties, same global
commodity markets. What separates their outcomes from Liberia's is not geology. It is a series of deliberate
decisions their governments made and Liberia's did not.
Botswana. At independence in 1966, Botswana was one of the poorest countries on earth. When De Beers arrived
to develop the Orapa diamond deposit in 1969, the government negotiated not a royalty arrangement but a joint
venture: Debswana, owned fifty percent by the state, fifty percent by De Beers, with a fifty-fifty profit split. When
De Beers returned in 1974 to develop Letlhakane, Botswana activated a contractual renegotiation clause, raised its
Debswana stake to fifty percent, and pushed the profit split to seventy-five percent in its favor, by bringing
independent legal, technical, and financial experts matched to De Beers' own team. In February 2025, Botswana
extended that framework further, increasing the state's share of Debswana's rough diamond output from twenty-
five to fifty percent by 2034. Diamonds now represent thirty percent of Botswana's GDP, eighty percent of export
earnings, and funded a Sovereign Wealth Fund that sustained average GDP growth of four to five percent annually
from 2000 to 2019 with public debt below twenty percent.
Ghana. The Minerals and Mining Act of 2006 mandates ten percent free carried interest for the government in every
mineral rights agreement, non-dilutable. Statutory royalties are five percent of revenue, with corporate income tax
between thirty-two and thirty-five percent on top. In 2026, Ghana introduced a sliding-scale royalty rising from five
percent to twelve percent as gold prices increase. Across all levies, Ghana's effective government take from mining
companies exceeds fifty percent of company profits. The Ghanaian framework applied to Bea Mountain's fiscal year
2021/22 production would have returned approximately US$290 million to the state. Liberia received US$33.98
million.
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
Mali. On August 8, 2023, the government enacted a new Mining Code granting the state a free ten percent equity
stake in all projects, with an option to purchase an additional twenty percent within the first two years of production,
and five percent reserved for local investors. State and local ownership reaches thirty-five percent as a non-dilutable
floor. Royalties rose from 6.5 percent to ten percent. The stabilization clause was cut from thirty years to twenty.
Following audits under the new framework, Mali recovered US$1.2 billion in arrears. Most major operators signed.
Barrick refused, and the consequences of that refusal are addressed in Section X.
Tanzania. In 2017, Parliament passed three interlocking laws authorising renegotiation of any agreement deemed
unconscionable and requiring at least sixteen percent government interest in all mining projects, with an option to
acquire up to fifty percent. Stabilization clauses were prohibited from spanning the full operational life of a mine.
Several companies initiated international arbitration in response. Tanzania's approach carries the highest legal risk
of any model examined here, and is included not as a template but as evidence of what a sovereign parliament can
assert.
The DRC, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Kenya have each reformed their mining codes in the same direction
since 2011: higher royalties, larger mandatory equity stakes, shorter or narrower stabilization protections. Every
one of these countries concluded that the arrangements they inherited from the colonial or early post-independence
period were incompatible with national development. Every one found a legal path through that conclusion. Liberia
has the identical legal tools.
THE LEGAL ARCHITECTURE OF RECOVERY, AND WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT IT
Liberia's concession agreements contain stabilization clauses, described fully in Section I, that contractually insulate
ArcelorMittal, China Union, and Bea Mountain from new legislation worsening their terms during the protected
period. China Union's runs to 2034. ArcelorMittal's new Third Amendment extends through December 2050. These
constraints are legally real. What follows is a precise description of four mechanisms through which Liberia can
restructure its extractive position within the law, and an accounting of the consequences if those mechanisms are
bypassed.
The first mechanism is the new mining code applied to new agreements only. It is legally safe because it does not
touch stabilization clauses — it governs only projects not yet under a ratified MDA. It cannot recover a dollar from
ArcelorMittal or Bea Mountain, but it stops the bleeding on every concession that follows. The specific terms
required are detailed in Section XI's first mandate.
The second mechanism is breach-based termination, and it applies directly to China Union. As Section III
documents, the company has publicly admitted material breach of every major obligation in its 2009 MDA — the
road, the hydropower plant, the hospital, the workforce threshold, the Social Development Fund contributions.
Because the grounds for termination are the company's own breach rather than a unilateral government act, the
stabilization clause does not protect it. The company forfeited that protection when it violated its obligations. This
is the most legally defensible path to reclaiming a concession available to Liberia today.
The third mechanism is negotiated renegotiation at contract milestones or through mutual agreement. Botswana's
1974 activation of a contractual renegotiation clause, described in Section IX, is the model: independent expert
negotiators, documented economic analysis, a specific set of terms sought. The lesson from Liberia's own
ArcelorMittal Third Amendment is what happens without that capacity: the company received a twenty-five-year
extension and a US$200 million signature bonus while royalties remained at 4.5 percent. Leverage exists at every
renegotiation window a company requests. The question is who sits across the table.
The fourth mechanism is parliamentary sovereignty legislation. Tanzania's 2017 framework authorised Parliament
to invalidate unconscionable contracts and triggered international arbitration from several companies. In Mali,
Barrick Mining refused the 2023 revised code entirely, and Malian authorities subsequently arrested four Barrick
executives on allegations of money laundering and tax violations; the bail demand was set at fifty billion CFA francs.
Arbitration under ICSID or bilateral treaty mechanisms produces awards based not only on sunk investment but on
projected lost profits for the remaining concession term. If Liberia unilaterally altered ArcelorMittal's Third
Amendment without contractual grounds, the resulting claim measured against thirty million metric tons of annual
production through 2050 would exceed Liberia's entire national budget many times over. Parliamentary sovereignty
is a legal tool. It is also the costliest one.
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
"A negotiated solution, whereby the government and companies voluntarily agree to
adapt the applicable fiscal rules to the evolving economic context, would be the best
outcome to avoid protracted disputes.", International Institute for Environment and
Development, on Mali's 2023 mining code renegotiations
THREE THINGS LIBERIA MUST DO NOW
First, enact the new mining code before the end of 2026 and establish the National Mining Company with teeth.
Minister Matenokay Tingban announced in February 2026 that a new code would arrive within three months. That
announcement is now either a commitment or a broken promise, and Liberia has a documented history of being on
the wrong side of that distinction. The code must mandate a free carried state equity floor of 25 percent in all future
Class A mining agreements, a sliding-scale royalty that rises from 5 percent at market floor to 12 percent when iron
ore exceeds US$150 per metric ton and gold exceeds US$2,500 per ounce, a prohibition on in-country processing
waivers beyond 2030, and an absolute cap of 15 years on any stabilization clause in any new MDA. The National
Mining Company must have the board representation, audit access, and financial staff to function as an active
investor rather than the passive equity holder that Liberia's 10 percent stake in ArcelorMittal and Bea Mountain has
been for two decades, generating no documented dividends.
Second, serve a formal Notice of Material Breach on China Union today. Not next session. Not following further
review. Today. The 2009 MDA is specific, its obligations are documented, and the company's own officer publicly
admitted failure on April 1, 2024. Representative Foday Fahnbulleh of B**g County's District Seven has been
building the evidentiary record since he took office in January 2024, forced a subpoena of the company's managers,
held one in contempt, and extracted a written admission of valid concerns. The Ministry of Mines and Energy must
now formalise what Fahnbulleh has already proven in the legislative record: serve the Notice of Material Breach,
specify the contractual cure period, and notify China Union that non-compliance terminates the agreement. The
B**g Range iron ore deposits under that concession are among the largest undeveloped iron ore reserves in West
Africa. Liberia can re-tender them under a new code, in a transparent competitive process, on its own terms.
Third, establish an Independent Concession Compliance and Measurement Authority with statutory power to
independently weigh, assay, and record every mineral export at every Liberian port of exit. The VP Koung visit to
Kinjor just proved why this is urgent. The government's current capacity to verify what Bea Mountain is producing
consists of officials who visit the mine, watch the company's own weighing process, and countersign the company's
own export certificates. That is not verification. It is participation in a self-reporting mechanism that the April 13
disclosures suggest is producing figures 2.5 to 3.6 times below actual production. Rwanda's Rwanda Mines,
Petroleum and Gas Board places independent measurement instruments at every mining site and export terminal,
staffed by government-appointed officers whose salaries are paid by a mandatory contribution from the concession
companies calculated as a percentage of declared export value, entirely insulated from any company influence.
Liberia must build that institution by statute, empower it to refer export discrepancies exceeding 5 percent to the
Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission for criminal investigation, and fund it from day one through mandatory
concessionaire contributions. The cost of that institution is trivial. The cost of not building it is currently US$6.956
billion, and counting.
MASTER LEGISLATIVE RECORD, ALL CONCESSIONS
Named legislators, votes, and documented commercial entanglements
LEGISLATOR / BODY CONCESSION &
ACTION
VOTE / ROLE NOTE / ENTANGLEMENT
52nd Legislature (all 103
members)
ArcelorMittal MDA, May
2007
FOR 100 Toyota Hilux pickups distributed prior to
vote
Speaker Alex Tyler
(Montserrado)
AML 2007 ratification,
presided
PRESIDED Replaced Edwin Snowe, ousted via
documented cash-for-votes
Rep. Samuel Bondo (B**g
D #2)
Snowe removal, bribery ADMITTED Publicly confessed receiving US$5,000
Rep. Saah Gbollie (Margibi) Snowe removal, bribery ADMITTED Publicly confessed receiving US$5,000
Fanta Kamara, MBA | UNCENSORED | Sold Underground | April 2026UNCENSORED | SOLD UNDERGROUND | INVESTIGATIVE EDITORIAL
LEGISLATOR / BODY CONCESSION &
VOTE / ROLE NOTE / ENTANGLEMENT
ACTION
Rep. Foday Fahnbulleh (B**g
China Union enforcement,
OVERSIGHT Stopped company train; forced public
D #7)
2024 to 2026
breach admission
Legislature (both chambers) China Union, termination
NEVER ACTED 17 years of admitted non-compliance; no
for breach
cancellation notice
Sen. Simeon Taylor (Grand
Bea Mountain chair; AML
FOR / CHAIRED
Host county of Bea Mountain mine; called
Cape Mount)
3rd Amendment chair
BOTH
AML deal 'relevant and essential'
Rep. Clarence Massaquoi
Bea Mountain House
FOR / CHAIRED Promised thorough review; vote held 3 days
(Lofa D #3)
committee chair
later
Sen. Saah H. Joseph
Ivanhoe CAA, committee
AGAINST AML trucking/haulage contractor; stalled
(Montserrado)
chair; floor vote
hearings 7 weeks
Sen. Numene T.H. Bartekwa
Ivanhoe & AML 3rd
FOR BOTH /
Alleged AML logistics contract; denied
(Grand Kru)
Amendment, co-chaired
CONFLICTED
without documentation
both
Sen. Momo Cyrus (Lofa) Ivanhoe vote; AML security
FOR IVANHOE Owner/CEO SEGAL, AML's primary Nimba
oversight
security contractor; blocked guard
unionization
Sen. Nathaniel F. McGill
Ivanhoe Senate vote, Dec
FOR U.S.-sanctioned
(Margibi)
18 2025
Sen. Emmanuel Nuquay
Ivanhoe Senate vote FOR U.S.-sanctioned
(Margibi)
Sen. Albert T. Chie (Grand
Ivanhoe + AML 3rd
FOR BOTH U.S.-sanctioned; co-presided AML hearings
Kru)
Amendment
Sen. Bill Twehway (Rivercess) Ivanhoe Senate vote FOR U.S.-sanctioned
Sen. Nya D. Twayen (Nimba) Ivanhoe, absent; AML 3rd
DID NOT VOTE /
Cited AML's $4.7B unrepatriated profits;
Amendment, abstained
ABSTAINED
infrastructure failures
Sen. Clayton Duncan (Sinoe) /
AML 3rd Amendment ABSTAINED Unresolved compliance concerns / filed
Sen. Francis Dopoe (River
original referral motion
Gee)
Sen. Amara Konneh Ivanhoe, abstained; AML,
SPLIT 'Longstanding AML relationships' cited by
for
analysts for Ivanhoe abstention
25+ senators and
Sept 2025 AML Nimba
PARTICIPANTS Nimba caucus excluded; tour during active
representatives
luxury concession tour
3rd Amendment negotiations
Weah administration (2022) /
Ivanhoe $37M extrajudicial
EXTRAJUDICIAL Never ratified by Legislature; FCPA
Min. Grigsby (Boakai)
payment; executive
implications; Grigsby misled President
backchannel
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Forest Trends, 'Rapid Assessment of Liberia's Mining Sector,' March 2026, $7.8B importer figure; $2.7B export discrepancy; $844M government revenue; $173M community fund shortfall
LEITI 14th, 15th & 16th Country Reports (2020 to 2023), revenue/export/employment data; AML/LRA/LPRA suspicious transactions forwarded to LACC
Liberian Observer, 'Liberia Short-Changed by Decades of Mining Deals,' March 2026; 'A Nation at the Mercy of Mining Giants,' April 2025, $6.9B gap; self-reporting failure; zero income tax records
Liberian Observer, 'The AML New Deal Debacle,' Jan 2026; AllAfrica, 'Twayen Stands His Ground,' Jan 30 2026, $4.7B profit allegation; Twayen/Duncan/Dopoe abstentions
FrontPageAfrica, 'Senate Votes to Amend Bea Mountain MDA,' Aug 2023; Liberian Observer, 'House Convenes at Night to Approve Bea Mountain Concession,' Sep 7 2023, 15/5 Senate; 37/39 House late-night vote
FrontPageAfrica, 'Senate Concurs to Pass Third AML Amendment,' Jan 31 2026; Liberian Investigator, 'House Passes AML Third MDA Amendment,' Jan 21 2026, vote mechanics; Moye motion; Briggs-Mensah objection
FrontPageAfrica, 'China Union Threatened Over US$11M SDF,' Oct 2025; The New Dawn, 'China Union Admits to 8 Yrs Failure,' Apr 2024, documented breach admission
Liberian Observer / AllAfrica, 'How Senators Decided the Ivanhoe Deal,' Dec 19 2025, named Senate roll call; Cyrus/SEGAL; Konneh reversal; 4 sanctioned senators voted FOR; Bartekwa/Snowe positions
Liberian Observer, 'Senators Joseph, Bartekwa Conflicted by Trucking Contract with AML,' Dec 9 2025; 'Major Red Flags in Senators' Visit to AML,' Sep 22 2025, Joseph haulage fleet; luxury tour; Nimba exclusion
The New Dawn Liberia, 'Senator Alarms Security Threat,' Sep 19 2025; Independent Probe, 'SEGAL Inhumane Treatment,' Jul 2022, Cyrus as SEGAL CEO; AML as 100% revenue source; unionization block from Senate floor
Insights Liberia, 'US Justice Dept Complicitly Silent Over Ivanhoe/HPX Transactions,' Nov 18 2025, $37M constitutional irregularity; FCPA analysis; no DOJ investigation
FrontPageAfrica, 'US Lawmaker Warns Ivanhoe Atlantic Rail Project,' Dec 11 2025, Moolenaar letter to Rubio; CITIC/Zijin 40% equity stake
Liberian Investigator, 'Minister Grigsby Accused of Lobbying for Foreign Miner,' May 6 2025, Ivanhoe/HPX executive backchannel; misled President on Guinea approvals
The New .