Editor\u2019s Note: This is the first of a series on illegal logging activities by Masayaha Logging Company, which works in Grand Bassa County.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n TARR TOWN, Grand Bassa County \u2013 Mid-last year, Masayaha Logging Company asked chiefs and elders of Doe Clan in Compound Number One to harvest expensive logs in their forest in order to build roads, handpumps and a townhall in that community. But the company wanted the deal kept a secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The villagers agreed with the terms, adding a fee of US$5 on each cubic meter of red hardwood used for railroad ties and bridges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe told them to connect the road from Tarr Town to Kpana Town because the people there are suffering,\u201d recalled Daniel Tarr, one of the elders who brokered the deal. The next month, Masayaha begin felling some 641 cubic meters of the red ironwood, according to the locals\u2019 record of the harvesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe company wanted some ekki [woods],\u201d added Junior Gueh, a townsman who also works for the company and helped craft the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the deal was illegal, as the forest adjacent Tarr Town is outside the Worr Community Forest Masayaha legally operates. It is one among a string of illegal operations the Lebanese-own firm has run in that region in the last two years, involving five towns. It has been documented that Forestry Development Authority (FDA) has taken no required actions against the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Masayaha has a 15-year agreement to operate the Worr Community Forest. Magna Logging Corporation, owned by Liberian businessman Moley Kamara, originally holds the contract for the forest but appears to have subcontracted it to Masayaha. The forest covers 35,337 hectares in Compound Number One B but the company traveled about 100 kilometers to the Doe Clan in Compound Number One A to harvest first-class logs. It said there were not many of that species trees in the Worr Community Forest, according to several villagers we interviewed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Beeweh, an elderly woman in Zolah Town, told The DayLight the company harvested logs in the forest there in 2020. Beeweh said Ali Harkous, Masayaha\u2019s CEO visited the town. Her description of a bald, bearded Lebanese man matches Harkous\u2019 figure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Masayaha also felled an unspecified number of logs in Lolo Town last year, according to residents. We told them \u2018If you fix our two bridges here, we will give you the logs [you] want,\u201d said Solomon Kpolon, an elder of that town. \u201cThe first was 17 logs but the second one they took it overnight we did not know about it.\u201d This reporter saw some of the logs the villagers said Masayaha felled in the forest not far from the town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Vorlorgor, a village next to Tarr Town, villagers seized the company\u2019s machines after it felled 17 trees, according to John Garbleejay, an administrator of that town. They later allowed illicit activities to go on after the company promised to pave the main route that leads into the community, Garbleejay said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harvesting outside a contract area is a grave violation in forestry. A company\u2019s penalties for such an offense include a fine in United States Dollars upon conviction by a court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is evidence that the FDA has known of Masayaha\u2019s illegal logging deals from its first known offense in 2020 but ignored them. The agency conducted an inquest in August that year on several logging violations in Grand Bassa, River Cess and Nimba, those of Masayaha. Investigators recommended an \u201cappropriate action\u201d against it but that has yet to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that, too, was not the first time the FDA heard about Masayaha\u2019s violations and failed to act. Several months earlier in 2020, Reuben Barnie, one of the villagers, informed FDA about the incident. Barnie had spotted a Masayaha truck transporting logs from Kweezah, the home of the descendants of people who were evicted from the land Firestone occupies today<\/a>. Knowledgeable of the company\u2019s contract area, Barnie raised an alarm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are calling your attention to please come in our district to carry on an investigation so as to stop future embarrassment,\u201d Barnie wrote in a May letter last year. He took to a local radio station and engaged the company. He then followed up with numerous phone calls to Joseph Tally, FDA\u2019s deputy managing director for operations, whose recordings Barnie gave to The DayLight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBarnie how you doing?\u201d Tally can be heard in one of the recordings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes, we still keeping our fingers crossed for the verdict,\u201d Barnie responds, referencing a previous conversation in which Tally promised to take action against the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKeeping your finger crossed for what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor the verdict. The people went to do the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI told you we have already suspended the people activities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale de Surveillance (SGS)<\/a>, a Switzerland-based firm that developed Liberia\u2019s log-tracking system or LiberTrace<\/a>, also reported the illegal operation. The development of the system was crucial to forestry reform, as importing countries such as the European Union and Great Britain demanded legal timbers. It is now turned over the majority of its responsibilities to the FDA\u2019s legality verification department (LVD). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Barnie, Stephen Toomey, one of the residents of that area, reported the case to the FDA. This reporter witnessed Toomay raise the issue in a Worr Community Forest meeting in October last year. Joseph Kpainay, an FDA ranger assigned in the region, then asked him to file an official complaint with the agency\u2019s regional office in Buchanan. Toomay did it days after the meeting but got no response. Kpainay acknowledged receipt of Toomay\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe concerned citizens of the affected communities are therefore calling on your good office to promptly investigate, intervene and promptly provide an appropriate solution\u2026,\u201d Toomay\u2019s letter read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n News of the illegal logging Masayaha carried out last year made it to FDA\u2019s headquarters in Paynesville. In August, the same month as the illegal felling, SGS reported on the incident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDuring the month, some felling out of CFMA Worr concession was seen again !!!,\u201d SGS said in a report. It also criticized the FDA for approving the company\u2019s harvesting plan that year without a required five-year plan, a breach of the Code of Harvesting Practices and Standard Operation Procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSurely, because no action was taken from the felling out of concession at\u2026 Worr reported by SGS a year ago, that illegality is still going over there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But amid SGS\u2019 report and Barnie\u2019s advocacy, FDA permitted Masayaha to export logs that could have included the stolen woods. Between 2020 and last year, Masayaha exported 365 logs, 360 of them ekki woods, according to official shipment records. In fact, it approved three of the company\u2019s shipments about the time of the Garkpa Charlie Town illegal logging, according to the SGS report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In normal forestry practices, the FDA is supposed to trace every log the company harvests back to its stump to make sure the logs were legally sourced before they are transported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stage.thedaylight.org\/wp68\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Masayaha-2.png\")
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