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these 33 companies; year of signing the agreement, its term, the
concession area granted, the nationality of the investor. As many
companies had the term of their concession agreements, the
concession area, or other clauses changed, additional information
was given in the notes following this Annex. These notes also
mention numerous examples of general features of the timber
companies' operations in the country (referred to in the earlier
part of this chapter): the boundary conflicts resulting from the
overlapping of concession areas, the illegal harvesting of logs
in areas outside one own's concession area, the assigning of
agreements concluded only shortly before, the management
contracts signed between sometimes very dubious companies and the
concessionaire, the latter often a Liberian or a group of
Liberians which had concluded a concession agreement utilizing
their political influences and their personal contacts with
Government officials (often colleagues).
This characteristic, the involvement of Liberian politicians and
other "big shots" in logging companies, is the subject of a
separate column, presenting the names of these personalities
working for or having interest in (shares) these companies. The
accompanying notes reveal their social status, political
importance or Government functions. This characteristic forms
one of the most serious obstacles to the development of the
Liberian forestry sector: the "protection" which these companies
received from these Liberians and which allowed them not to
reforestate - in violation of their agreements - to evade taxes,
not to pay proper stumpage fees, or training fees, or
reforestations fees, not to meet the requirements with respect
to the amount of sawn timber to be produced, to operate outside
the legally allowed concession area, and the "creaming" of the
forests. The last mentioned activity consists of cutting the
most valuable species, sometimes only one species in an area
(the company's concession area). The company's income is thus
maximized but an area is left behind which contains many
valuable species. However, it has lost a great part of its
attraction for other investors despite the fact that it still
contains many commercially exploitable species. But it is
important to note that this activity, the "creaming of
(Liberia's) forests", is not restricted to (some) logging
companies (notably the Maryland Logging Company), In fact the
country's major iron ore company, LAMCO J.V,, applies the same
principle in considering ore with an Fe-content below 45? as
waste and unacceptable although such a product forms the major
objective of the operations of another mining company, the Bong
Mining Company (B.M.C). (Note: The Liberian Government owns
50? of the shares of LAMCO).
Some companies were deliberately omitted from Annex 19. The main
reason is that most of them never developed any real activities,
in most cases owing to the lack of capital, although they had
signed a timber concession agreement with the Liberian