By: Wonderr Koryenen Freeman, Attorney, CFCS

This December (2025) the Liberian government passed three major concession agreements—simultaneously. These included the Ivanhoe Atlantic (formerly HPX), alongside separate offshore exploration contracts with TotalEnergies and Oranto Petroleum. It was interesting to note that the simultaneous passage of three investment deals raised the specter of due diligence adequacy and public scrutiny. This is especially necessary within the context of Liberia’s sad and unfortunate history of auctioning off its mineral wealth for a “song”. But before I get into the history, which, by the way, is sordid at best, let’s register that the present deal does not seem to fare any better. Right off the bat of passing the concession deals, the finger-pointing and recrimination started about violations of Liberian laws, amidst other aspects of the deals that show our lawmakers’ callous disregard for the economic wellbeing of the general populace.

Bogus Concessions 1.0: The Ghost Oil Block 13 Was Never Exorcised.

In 2013, under the first Unity Party-led government of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Mr. Joseph Boakai, the Liberian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI) commissioned an audit of Liberia’s extractive industry. The express objective of the audit was to:

to conduct a post-award audit of the processes involved in awarding material public concessions, contracts, licenses, permits and other rights of exploitation of diamond, gold, oil, timber, and agricultural resources of Liberia from 13 July 2009 to 31 December 2011. …ascertain that these processes were in compliance with applicable Liberian laws at the time of award… (Moore Stephens Final Report, 2013, p. 3)

Moore Stephens LLP, a UK-based accountancy and consultancy firm, was hired for the job. Moore Stephen conducted the audit, alright, covering the extractive industry sector. The task given to Moore Stephens was straightforward: assess the concession agreements and determine if they are compliant with all applicable Liberian laws. Moore Stephens did just that, but the result wasn’t good at all. In fact, it was all bad news from start to finish. In May 2023, the Firm issued its final report, in which it found that:

…only two (2) out of sixty-eight (68) resource contracts worth $8bn (£5.1bn) were conducted properly (i.e., lawfully). Concessions granted in agriculture, forestry, mining and oil were either wholly [non-compliant (NC)] or [only] partially compliant (PC). Even worse, about 56% was graded non-compliant. In other words, only 3% of the concession agreements signed (2009-2011) was deemed to be fully compliant with Liberian law. Just imagine – only 3%!

The two persons most responsible for this economic catastrophe were then-President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her Vice President, Joseph Nyumah Boakai, whose constitutional function was Presiding Officer of the House of Senate. What followed was a media circus with finger-pointing and recrimination. Liberian authorities did not carry out any further investigations, whether administrative or criminal. In a very grotesque and ugly manner, our leaders compromised the interests of the Liberian people, and all the perpetrators walked away with impunity. For his part, Mr. Joseph Boakai, then Senate President, would later claim that he played no part in the decision-making. In essence, he was simply Ellen Johnson’s errand boy and that all responsibility for this gross economic injustice against the Liberian people lies at her feet. He would repeat the song again and again, in different words, such as, “The vice presidency is a nominal position”; “I was just a ‘racing car’ parked in the garage”; “I was just Ellen Johnson’s errand boy”; “Ellen was the one who squandered opportunities”. Lots of excuses, but the Liberian people ate it up and voted for him as president in 2023. He would go on to take seat officially in 2024.

The Ghost of Oil Block 13 Returns to Inflict More Economic Pain on Liberia

You would think that, given the hullabaloo surrounding the LEITI/Moore Stephens audit, the next set of concession deals would be mostly compliant. However, in a culture of impunity, the corruption and sheer greed were bound to be repeated. The ghost of Oil Block 13 was never exorcised, so it came right back to haunt Liberia. The next set of investment concessions were passed on December 11,2025, and they were anything but compliant. If fact, some of its fiercest critics were not from the media or from the political opposition, but from members of the ruling elite. Two of the concession deals have come under particular scrutiny – the Oranto deal and the Ivanhoe/HPX multi-user rail access deal.

Ivanhoe/HPX Multi-User Rail

This deal is supposed to facilitate the transportation of iron ore from Guinea to Liberia. My common sense tells me that, first and foremost, there must be a pre-existing bona fide agreement between the governments of Liberia and Guinea-for the use of Liberia’s rail network to ship ore. But of course, they haven’t reached such an agreement. At least not yet. Beyond this, there was controversy surrounding the paving of the road leading up to the rail tracks; a key recommendation never made it to the final draft. Even worse, other senators, like Amara Konneh (Ind. Gbarpolu County) and Saah Joseph (CDC, Montserrado County) raised myriad issues, including the approximately US$37 million already paid by Ivanhoe to the Liberian government under a previous administration which should have been deemed a non-refundable signature bonus; however, this payment ended up as a loan to be charged to Liberia. So, with insiders’ recriminations, one wonders what independent assessors would say about this concession. Bogus Concession 2.0? [Oil block 13] lessons never learned? Unfortunately, this is Liberia, where history teaches us nothing. We just repeat the same mistakes over and over again and pray to God for deliverance and blessings. We make no attempt to use our God-given five senses.

Oranto Petroleum, Fooling Liberia Twice.

There is an old saying: if a man fools me once, shame on him; if he fools me twice, now, that’s a shame on me. The name Oranto is not new to Liberia. It is a name steeped in bribery scandals. A Global Witness’s investigative report titled: Catch me if you can (dated March 2018) detailed an intricate web of corruption and bribery in the sale and transfer of Liberia’s Oil Block 13. The report accuses Oranto Petroleum of paying bribes to Liberian officials through NOCAL (P.14, 16, 32). The are multiple reports in the internapional media of Oranto and NOCAL being implicated in a GAC report, accused of paying bribes to Liberian government [executive] officials and legislators for oil blocks that Oranto had no intention or capacity to develop. At the right moment, Oranto simply flipped the oil blocks to Chevron, fetching north of US$100 million windfall (Forbes, ProPublica, Global Witness). Even though the General Auditing Commission first alleged improprieties in an official audit, there was never any investigation of the wrongdoing or prosecution. There was no criminal probe by either the Ministry of Justice or the Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC). As usual, all accused persons walked away with impunity. According to Mr. Boakai, all of that was his boss, Ellen Johnson’s, fault. He was only an errand boy. As he campaigned in 2017 and again in 2023, he promised that none of that would happen under his administration. Liberia, he promised, “would be a totally different country under my leadership”. Not even a decade later, Oranto is back and, again, has been awarded another contract. What kind of reasoning is that? Why even entertain a proposal from and company that took advantage of Liberia’s corrupt political culture, paid petty cash for oilfields only to flip it, making more than 100 million USD at our expense? This just goes to show how evil the Liberian ruling elites are. Their greed knows no limits. As usual, the deal passed because enough lawmakers were more than willing to deal with a company that had duped Liberia before. This is the sad irony of today’s Liberia. This is the sad irony of people who claim that Mr. George Weah (and his party, CDC) were destroying Liberia and that they had come to rescue it. Mr. Boakai, now president, and a self-confessed squanderer, is back in business—back in the squandering business. He will definitely sign these dubious deals, and somewhere down the line, just like in the past, Liberia’s resources will be extracted; the politicians will get rich. Foreign investors will make millions, and the Liberian people will continue to wallow in the same poverty and destitution that generations of Liberians before them had endured. This level of economic injustice and oppression is simply too much. In the end, as always, the final decision rests with the Liberian people. There is a price to pay for voting for wicked people. There is a price to pay for “dancing with the devil”. They say elections have consequences. Equally, there is a price to pay for political indifference. With an entrenched culture of impunity, corruption and economic oppression against the people is simply business-as-usual.

Wonderr K. Freeman is a Liberian Investment Attorney, Political Economist, Accountant, and Certified Financial Crimes Specialist (CFCS) currently based in Minneapolis, USA. Mr. Freeman’s professional interests span the intersection of law and economics, including the political economy of development, economic justice, international trade/investment law, and financial crimes law. He can be reached at [email protected]. He blogs at https://wonderrfreeman.com