On October 25, Patrick Honnah, a Senior Media Coordinator of the Unity Party Campaign team, appeared on a radio station in Bomi County and claims former Vice President Joseph Boakai is responsible for the Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) investment in the southeast.
His exact words were: “The company that is providing job in the entire southeast they called the company Golden Veroleum, it was Joseph Boakai initiative as Vice President who flew from here to Malaysia to negotiate the deal for the company to come, today people in that southeast got jobs to do”.
Audio: Patrick claims about GVL Investment
To fact check the claim, we conducted multiple google search of GVL.
Our search found that Golden Veroleum Liberia majority investor is Golden Agri-Resources which is among a brand of companies that make up Sinar Mas with head office in Jarkata, Indonesia.
Our search also found a January 12, 2010 Daily Observer article published by a website named Farmlandgrab.org.
The about info of the website says it contains news about the global rush to buy or lease farmlands by agribusiness, governments and financial investors — and people’s resistance against it.The article adds that the Indonesian global palm oil giant, Golden Agri-Veroleum, and the Government of Liberia through its Inter-ministerial Concession Committee had begun negotiating investment in Liberia’s Agriculture sector.
In the article there is a photo of former Vice President Joseph Boakai in a hand shake with Mr. Matt Karinen of Golden Veroleum Resources delegation when they visited Liberia in 2010.
The article also quotes a January 5, 2010, press release from the office of the former Vice President Joseph Baokai stating that the government was very keen on Golden Veroleum investment.
Also, we found an article from the African Farming and Food Processing, an agriculture magazine distributed in English speaking African countries. The article published on February 10, 2010 was about the concluding stages of the investment deal.
The article quotes Ricard Tolbert, the then head of the National Investment Commission of Liberia, as saying that the Government of Liberia was in the “final stages of securing a US$1.6bn Indonesian investment in palm oil production”, adding that the negotiations had continued for a year.
It adds that the discussions aroused from “early contact, he and Agriculture Minister Florence Chenoweth had led a Liberian delegation to the company’s plantations in Indonesia”.
We also search and found a March 26, 2014 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Daily Media Summary.
This summary captures various news articles published by newspaper on the same day. As part of the summary, a New Dawn article reports that that the former Vice President Joseph Boakai attended a welcome dinner hosted in his honor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Sime Darby. It adds that “he will continue a crusade to fetch those investments and partnerships opportunities that will deliver positive life changing conditions to the people of Liberia”.ed
Conclusion
Based on these facts we therefore conclude that the claim by Patrick Honnah that Golden Veroleum came to Liberia through the initiative of former Vice President Joseph Boakai who negotiated the deal for the company to start operations in Liberia is unproven.
Our research shows that the concession agreement between Golden Veroleum and the Government of Liberia was signed in 2010, following several engagements by the Inter-Ministerial Concession Committee led by then Minister of Agriculture Florence Chenoweth and Head of the National Investment Commission Richard Tolbert.
Golden Veroleum is an Indonesian company and so former Vice President Joseph Boakai visit to Malaysia was to meet with heads of Sime Darby and not GVL. There is no prove that the former Vice President led the negotiations for GVL to invest in Liberia.
This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content.