Mr. Vice President — Measure Your Words at Home

MR. VICE PRESIDENT — MEASURE YOUR WORDS AT HOME A CorporateWatch Liberia critique of Vice President Jeremiah Kpan Koung's Accra address to the Africa Minerals Policy Forum (19 October 2026, as reported by The New Dawn) As reported by The New Dawn (20 October 2026, by Lincoln G. Peters — https://www.thenewdawnliberia.com/koung-pushes-africas-mineral-sovereignty/), in Accra, Vice President Jeremiah Kpan Koung spoke the language of mineral sovereignty: fair returns, protected communities, safeguards never weakened, revenues never surrendered. "Our countries should not have to weaken safeguards or surrender reasonable revenues to attract investment." Mining communities, he said, must be central beneficiaries, and partnerships "should be assessed by the skills transferred, businesses developed, industries established and public value created." CorporateWatch Liberia welcomes every one of those sentences — and measures them against the record of his own government, in the concession corridor of Nimba, Grand Bassa and Bong. The record at home. The ArcelorMittal Harm Registry documents 93 cases: at least 34 lives lost, at least 2,981 people harmed, 24 injury cases. Cases fully investigated, with rulings implemented: zero. A Ministry of Labour ruling ordering US$308,000 to 546 contractors has stood since September 2021, its payment never publicly confirmed. An injured driver's ruling — reinstatement or US$40,098.08 — stands the same way. The EPA has fined the company again and again (US$185,000 in October 2025; US$500,000 in August 2026) while its reports remain unpublished and the Phase 2 environmental study remains withheld. And in January 2026 — under this administration, ratified by this Legislature — Amendment No. 3 extended the company's term to 2050, without the public assessment of benefits the Vice President now recommends to Africa, and without remedy for a single one of the 93. Point by point. He calls for strong institutions and transparent licensing: Liberia's EPA keeps no public library of its reports, and the text of the amendment his government ratified is not public. He calls for communities as central beneficiaries: the communities of the corridor hold the Registry's 2,981 names. He calls for partnerships assessed by public value: no such assessment preceded the extension to 2050. He warns against weakening safeguards: the safeguard that matters most — enforcement — has never once been carried through to an implemented ruling. The split. And beneath the harm sits the bargain itself. CorporateWatch Liberia's charge, stated by our founder: of the value of Liberia's own ore, Liberia keeps some 2–12% while ArcelorMittal takes some 90–98% — and the same pattern runs across the country's other concessions. The documented anchor sits inside that charge: Liberia's own Minerals and Mining Law sets mineral royalties at just 3–10% (Section 17.4) — before tax holidays and stabilisation do the rest. A country that keeps a tenth of its wealth while its people carry the harm has not negotiated a partnership; it has signed away its sovereignty and called the surrender investment. The enabling. Twenty years ago, Global Witness examined this concession's founding agreement and called it a state within a state — a company holding powers no guest should hold in another people's country. A state within a state does not sustain itself. It is sustained — by duty bearers who sign, who ratify, who collect fines and bury reports, who leave rulings unenforced and letters unanswered while the vulnerable pay in sight, in limbs, in lives. CorporateWatch Liberia names this plainly: it is the capture of the state by the interests it exists to restrain, and its cost is carried by Liberia's most vulnerable population. The Vice President told Accra that sovereignty must not be surrendered. We agree. We ask him to begin where sovereignty is actually lost or kept: at home. Open the investigations. Publish the reports. Enforce the rulings. Compensate the families. Assess — publicly, as he preached — before another decade of this concession is spoken of as development. Sovereignty is not a speech. It is an investigation opened, a ruling enforced, a family compensated. — CorporateWatch Liberia Documented truth. Protected voices. Justice demanded. corporatewatchliberia.org

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