The_Open_Door_deel1

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sions as the Mesurado Group of Companies, the new owner of the
African Fruit Company, was (and still is) mainly owned by members
of the Tolbert family. Minister Stephen A. Tolbert had been
the company's President until his appointment as Minister of
Finance in his brother's cabinet in 1972.
One of the most intense reactions came from Albert Porte, a renowned
critic of government officials and Liberian Presidents.
In September 1974 in a pamphlet he attacked the way in which
the Mesurado Group of Companies had bought the AFC, criticised
Minister Stephen Tolbert's conflict of interest, and qualified
the whole affair as
"stifling of Liberian business Ly high-handed methods indistinguishaLle
from open thievery, highway roLLery and
daylight Lurglary as was the case of the take Over of the
African 7ruit Company;" (37)
A court action for damages of libel which resulted from Albert
Porte's protest resulted in a victory for the businessman-millionaire-cabinet
minister, and in December 1974 Albert Porte
was fined a quarter of a million dollars (38).
An opposition periodical, of which Albert Porte was one of the
editors, revealed in its last issue before it was banned by the
Supreme Court - over which Minister Stephen Tolbert's father-inlaw
presided, Chief Justice James A.A. Pierre - that a group of
Liberians had been planning and negotiating to buy the African
Fruit Company since 1972, but that one of them, E.E. Dennis
had betrayed the other two (Oliver Bright, Jr. and Richard
Morris, both important government officials) and had sold them
out to the Mesurado Group of Companies (39).
The scandal which erupted from the purchase of the African Fruit
Company by the Mesurado Group of Companies, the famous "Albert
Porte Case" of December 1974, the imprisonment and condemnation
of editors of the "Revelation" and the subsequent banning of the
magazine in January 1975 turned out to be a serious test case.
As a matter of fact it was the first one for the Tolbert
Administration, as the controversial take-over by a member of the
Tolbert-clan in reality covered a struggle for power within the
group of Americo-Liberians, a struggle which was won by those in
power. Ernest E. Dennis, a cousin of both President William
Tolbert and Minister Stephen Tolbert (40), eventually became
employed by the Mesurado Group of Companies where in 1976 he
headed the AFC-section. Later on he was promoted to the Vice-
Presidency of the group of companies.
The new owners of the African Fruit Company did not start negotiations
with the Government for the signing of a formal concession
agreement though both Minister Tolbert and Ernest Dennis
were fully aware of the absence of one. The use of privileges
such as duty-free importation of materials and supplies is
therefore obviously intentional and apparently illegal whereas
the opportunity created by the loss of about $ 2 million - accumulated
by the former owners of the rubber plantation - was greedily
seized with a claim on loss-carry-forward privileges despite
the fact that no documentary evidence exists in Liberia that such a
privilege was ever granted to the company (41)« Moreover, in a
letter to the Concessions Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance