The_Open_Door_deel1

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completed by the end of 1960 (15). The consequences of financing
this mining venture by nearly 90? borrowed funds in combination
with the extraordinary provisions of the 1960 Mining Concession
Agreement, were to reduce considerably the benefit of this mining
enterprise for Liberia but it should not be forgotten that
representatives of the Liberian Government had at all times
been fully informed about the details of the arrangement. Some of
them had even provided legal advice to LAMCO, such as the Speaker
of the House of Representatives Richard Henries (comparable to
William Tubman advising Firestone in 1925), or were affiliated to
the Swedish investors in another manner, such as the Director of
the National Planning Agency and later the Secretary of the
Treasury Milton Weeks who became a Director and the Vice-
President of the L.I.O., the private partner of the Liberian
Government in LAMCO (16). These relationships, to say the least,
represented potential conflicts of interest.
In order to evaluate LAMCO's performance and to judge the
Liberian criticism of later years it seems appropriate to have a
look first of all at the major agreements, notably the i960
Mining Concession Agreement and the Bethlehem Tax Convention. As
the existing literature on LAMCO amply deals with these
documents (17) the main provisions of these agreements will only
be summarized below, further details of the concession agreement
being presented in Annex 14-
The Mining Concession Agreement
The concession agreement (18) granted exclusive rights in respect
of iron ore, iron bearing material, manganese, bauxite, columbite,
mica, oil and natural gas within specified areas and gave the
Liberian American-Swedish Minerals Company (composed of the
Government of Liberia and the L.I.O. Ltd. in equal shares) a 75?
undivided interest and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation a 25?
undivided interest in the Concession. The concession area
consisted of six regions which were known to contain iron ore
deposits: three in the Nimba Mountains, two in the Bassa Hills
and one in the Putu Range. In addition there was granted an area
at Lower Buchanan (in Grand Bassa County) for a port with related
installations, an area for the construction of a railroad running
from the projected port to the mining site in the Nimba
Mountains, two areas for the supply of materials needed in
respect of construction activities and an "Exploration Area" to
be selected within a distance of 25 miles on each side of the
railroad line before November 18 i960 from a described area
which would become part of the concession area once certain
prescribed formalities had been met. The aggregate total of these
areas was not to exceed 500 square miles (nearly 320,000 acres).
Further details and additional rights and obligations are
presented in Annex 14> An attempt to also include the Bong Range
in the concession area failed (also see DELIMCO/B.M.C).