The_Open_Door_deel1

-107-
the management of the company in 1974 claimed the following
concession area: (a) 361,556 acres in the Sangwin River Area north
of Baffu Bay (in Sinoe County); (b) 246,024 acres in Sinoe County
north of Greenville; and (c) 493,063 acres in the Cavalla and
Duobe River Area, Webbo District (in Grand Gedeh County), a total
of 1,100,643 acres (42). The concession area thus claimed by the
African Fruit Company/The Mesurado Group of Companies even exceeds
the historical one million acres concession area of Firestone, a
concession widely criticized on account of its size, and is
certainly not based on any legal document as even the Statement of
Understanding of 1952 only mentions a concession area (to be
granted) of 600,000 acres. The appalling official silence which
followed this undeniable unjustified and evidently illegal claim
may be explained either by the staffing of the Concession
Secretariat and the Ministry of Finance with unqualified and
incompetent people or, more likely, by the fact that the African
Fruit Company was owned by the (then) Minister of Finance,
Fear of losing their jobs may have motivated honest and competent,
but subordinate people within the Ministry of Finance or the
Concession Secretariat respectively, not to draw attention to or
to raise a word of official protest against this evil distortion
of facts. The continuation of this situation after the death of
the Finance Minister in April 1975 may be attributed to the fact
that it had lost its importance to those who had been transferred
or fired in the meantime or to the forgetfulness and sloth of
those who had retained their positions.
LETOURNEAU OF LIBERIA, LTD.
Robert G. LeTourneau, from Texas, U.S.A. had put the preaching of
the Gospel above anything else since 1932, and had created for
this purpose the LeTourneau Foundation. This foundation received
90 per cent of his earnings as well as the shares in the
LeTourneau Technical Institute of Texas, an earthmoving equipment
producing company which he owned. In 1951 he visited Liberia and
he became convinced that the best way to teach the Gospel to
Liberians was through teaching them basic American production
skills (43). In February 1952 the Government of Liberia granted a
80-year concession to R.G, LeTourneau whereby the latter obtained
the right to engage in a wide range of activities in a concession
area of half a million acres, situated in Sinoe County, inland,
from the Atlantic (including but not limited to the Baffu Bay
area), A company was created for this purpose, LeTourneau of
Liberia, Ltd., a subsidiary of the LeTourneau Technical Institute
of Texas, which in its turn was owned by the LeTourneau
Foundation (44),
The activities which the concessionaire was allowed to undertake
in the concession area (the geographical boundaries of which were
still to be determined) included but were not limited to the
following: