Guest Editorial: Absolutely No Existing Legally Binding Agreement With High Power Exploration (HPX)

A MONTH AGO the Executive Branch presented to the National Legislature a recast budget that had in it US$30 million, provided by HPX to support the national budget, when there is absolutely no existing legally binding agreement negotiated and signed between HPX and the Government of Liberia (GOL).

RIDICULOUSLY EMBARRASSING, THE government has been pitifully crawling on its belly under the cover of darkness, secretly taking money from HPX and promising them access to the rail and port facilities, ignoring the government’s own existing agreement with its biggest postwar investor, ArcelorMittal.

ACCORDING TO RELIABLE information, High Power Exploration (HPX) has given the government a three-month ultimatum to ratify an agreement masked in secrecy, which they entered into months ago.

HPX INSERTS INTO that agreement a clause that mandates the government to pay back $30 million she has so far given if the government fails to ratify their agreement from now to November 2022. Interestingly, the government is now under the weight of HPX’s pressure, given that it does not have the money to refund HPX if the November deadline reaches. So, the government has resorted to finding ways to have HPX’s agreement ratified by the Legislature before November.

SADLY, IT IS clear that HPX and its CEO, Robert Friedland, have zero interest to invest in expanding the rail and port infrastructures, other than trying to get rights over the rail to transport their ore from the Samandou mine to Buchanan port for export, and later they can sell that rights to the rail infrastructure to a third party in the future, which will eventually earn them lots of money as was done in Liberia with the Western Cluster.

CLEARLY, WITH THE government’s hands being tied and exposed, officials close to the Office of President George Manneh Weah have hinted that, under the guise of passing the highly popular AML’s third amendment deal that is dubbed as Liberia’s biggest postwar investment deal, the President has decided to sneak in the interest of HPX and have both passed simultaneously.