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Written by Our Senior Staff
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Monday, 14 January 2013 07:07 |
“OTC’s Kafu has choked President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf because there are reports that some of her close aides, friends and relatives are part of these Malaysian-connected companies that have been booked”
Mentioning Malaysian-connected logging companies in illegal exports of timbers from Liberia in spite of so-called forest reform measures seems to pierceinfuriation among Liberians, considering President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s campaign against allowing the Oriental Timber Company to operate in the country following her ascendency to the presidency in 2006.
When President Sirleaf in 2006 mandated a thorough review of concession agreements signed by previous regimes (Taylor & Bryant administrations), analysts observed with skepticism that even though she generalized the mandate, her key campaign was to ensure that OTC was never allowed to resume logging activities in Liberia under her regime.
“The President’s bandwagon seemed to have been supported by critics of the regime of Mr. Taylor, who persistently described OTC as a criminal logging company that was depleting Liberia’s forest and at the same time enslaving its citizenry in Grand Bassa and Rivercess Counties where the company operated at the time,” a pundit noted over the weekend in Monrovia.
Moreover, it seems least expected that the issuance of Private Use Permits (PUPs) probe by the James DorborJallah’s Special Independent Investigation Body (SIIB) could uncover scores of logging companies with Malaysian connection being in violation of the moratorium on PUP.
According to critics of the current regime, the illegal actions of Atlantic Resource and its associated companies- Forest Venture, Nature Orient Corporation and Southeast Resources regarding the PUPs, which the SIIB recommended to be investigated by the Ministry of Justice, have exposed anddenigrated a make-believe good governance practices the UP-led government has boasted of over the years.
“OTC’s Kafu has choked President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf because there are reports that some of her close aides, friends and relatives are part of these Malaysian-connected companies that have been booked,” one critic, having read the SIIB report claimed.
The critic surmised that the name Nature Orient Corporation booked for violation of the moratorium placed on timber exports could likely be a replica of the Oriental Timber Company, but that bringing OTC that was once rejected by the current regime to operate in Liberia could create very serious noise; hence a change of name.
Meanwhile, observers are uncertain whether recommendations advanced by SIIB would be implemented to the fullest as thereare now claims that selective justice aimed at saving the faces of major players in helping to deplete the nation’s forest is taking place in the corridor of power. |
