LIBERIA – The controversial Edwin Snowe, allegedly a former child soldier of the defund Charles Taylor’s rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) is at the helm of this “criminal deal” in Bomi County-accelerating the exportation of ores from Bomi Hills irrespective of its illegality.
The former LPRC managing director who was caught in an international audit for allegedly pocketing almost US$1 Million from the company, hustled his way out of the court, which is widely considered as being corrupt.
Even though the evidence was vivid, Edwin Snowe was set free by the court, despite all the revealing documents to convict.
Edwin Snowe did not support Weah during the last election. In fact, he had suggested that war would come to Liberia if Weah won the 2017 presidential election. Today, he is Weah’s best friend-flying, dining, and wining with him.
He was elected district number 6 representative in Montserrado County. He allegedly doubled-crossed the law, and again managed to get registered to contest the Bomi County senatorial seat while serving as a sitting lawmaker for another county.
People challenged Snowe’s attempt to contest the Bomi seat while a sitting lawmaker, however, in the wisdom of the Supreme Court bench on which his wife was sitting, it was not illegal for Snowe to switch legislative seats.
So, he contested and won. His reason for contesting the Bomi seat is that he was born in Mano River, Congo. Interestingly, Mano River is in Grand cape mount, not Bomi.
Now, as a senator of Bomi, he claimed to be exploiting all avenues to create jobs for his people-the people of Bomi, thus the re-activation of the Western Cluster deal, which came into being during the regime of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Edwin Snowe and his cohorts that include the Minister of Mines and Energy, Gesler Murray; Justice Minister Musa Dean; Finance Minister Samuel Tweah, and the National Investment Commission Chairman, Molewuleh B. Gray bulldozed the law by wrongfully drafting an MOU that pushed aside the Mineral Development Agreement of the Western Cluster as a means of getting the business started at all cost.
They even agreed to allow the shipment of ores by road instead of rail. They interestingly gave Western Cluster three years to use the main road to ferry the ores to the port of Monrovia, despite the health and security threats.
Snowe speaking on OK Radio recently attempted to exonerate himself from the wrongdoing. Suggesting, he got the support of all the law-making Caucus from the county.
Western Cluster, its parent company, and affiliated companies entered into a Mineral Development Agreement on August 3, 2011, for the Iron ore deposits of the Bomi Hills mines, the Mano River Congo mines, and the Bea Mountain Mines, situated in Bomi County and Grand Cape Mount County; the Agreement was thereafter ratified by the Legislature of the Republic of Liberia.
Subsequent to the ratification of the Agreement, Elenito Minerals & Mining, LLC, which owned forty-nine (49%) of the equity of the company at the time, with the approval of the government, sold its aforesaid forty-nine percent (49%) of the equity of the company, which was amended on 5th July 2013.
The 2013 amendment is yet to be ratified by the national legislature of the Republic of Liberia.
Despite all of these flaws, Snowe and his cohorts did an MOU that tried to make the transaction legal despite its illegality.
The very MOU revealed that the 2013 version of the amendment of the concession agreement has not been ratified by the National Legislature, which actually makes it illegal.
Yet, The Bomi senator and his team are using an MOU to legitimize an illegal concession. Watch out for an update.
