Monrovia, Liberia – Senior government officials found it difficult to describe the state of the 2019 Liberia–Guinea Implementation Agreement on Tuesday, which made the House of Representatives special concession hearing crucial.
The agreement serves as the legal basis for the contentious Concession and Access Agreement (CAA) with Ivanhoe Liberia (HPX/SMFG). Instead, parliamentarians heard contradictions, ambiguity, and most remarkably the Ministry of Foreign Affairs publicly denying any role in the process.
On the other hand, Foreign Affairs completely distanced itself. Gabriel Selee, the Deputy Minister for Administration, denied any role in the discussions or oversight of the CAA or the Implementation deal that purports to serve as its legal foundation, telling MPs that the Ministry was not aware of the deal and “was not a part of it.”
A crucial gap was immediately revealed during the hearing, which was called by the Specialized Committee looking into the status of the Liberia–Guinea Implementation deal: Guinea has not ratified the deal, although Liberia did in 2021.
Since the agreement is meant to regulate all cross-border usage of Liberia’s rail and port infrastructure, Representatives Jeremiah Sokan, Ivar Jones, Dorwon Gleekia, and Marcus Thomas were clearly shocked by the revelation.
Cllr. Charles F. D. Karmo II, Deputy Minister of Justice for Economic Affairs, frequently supported the Implementation Agreement’s constitutionality without verifying if Guinea had ratified it. “Have our Guinean counterparts ratified this agreement up to date?” Rep. Ivar Jones inquired immediately, but there was never a response.
Jones pushed harder, reminding him that the agreement is binding only on Liberia since “the Guinean Legislature has not ratified it.” He then pressed whether Liberia had even transmitted the ratified agreement to Guinea. Cllr. Karmo admitted it had not been sent, offering only that “Guinea and Liberian laws are not the same.” At one point he attempted to justify the government’s inactivity by saying, “We were trying to send a team to Guinea, but something happened.”
His responses clashed sharply with the structure of the 2019 Implementation Agreement, which lays out a meticulous, bilateral approval process for any Guinean company seeking access to Liberia’s rail and port facilities. The agreement requires Guinea to first determine a company’s eligibility, followed by Liberia’s review through a joint Monitoring Committee and the Inter-Ministerial Committee. It also mandates a standardized Access Agreement template — a safeguard intended to prevent one-off deals and ensure fairness.
In the instance of the CAA with Ivanhoe Liberia, none of these actions seem to have been taken. There is no proof that Guinea finished an eligibility check, no documentation of an access request sent to Liberia, no minutes from the Monitoring Committee, no approval from the IMC, and no assurance that the CAA follows the necessary framework. Lawmakers noticed.
provided that Guinea had already built its own railway, Representative Dorwon Gleekia questioned if Guinea had ever provided explicit authorization for its ore to travel through Liberia. The only response from Cllr. Karmo was that SMFG, Ivanhoe’s subsidiary in Guinea, had secured a mining permit. Article 3.3 of the Implementation Agreement, which reads, “Neither Party shall sign any contract or undertake any action that directly or indirectly restricts or prevents the full effect of this Agreement,” was Gleekia’s response.
Representative Jeremiah Sokan’s criticism of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for neglecting to inform the Legislature of Guinea’s non-ratification prior to accepting the transaction caused the hearing to take a more acute turn. “In accordance with what we have approved here, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not counsel this Legislature or even notify the Guineans. That disappoints me,” Sokan remarked.
As the investigation gets more intense, the committee halted the hearing and told all witnesses to return on Tuesday. Lawmakers are now looking for clarification on the Implementation Agreement’s status as well as how a multibillion-dollar cross-border concession was made without the Ministry in charge of international coordination, diplomacy, and treaties.
