—As Company’s Illusion of Manufacturing Influence supersedes Liberia’s MCC Compact
IPNEWS: The House of Representatives special concession hearing became of key interest Tuesday after senior government officials struggled to explain the status of the 2019 Liberia–Guinea Implementation Agreement
The agreement is the legal foundation upon which the controversial Concession and Access Agreement (CAA) with Ivanhoe Liberia (HPX/SMFG) now rests. What lawmakers heard instead was confusion, contradiction, and, most strikingly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs openly disowning any involvement in the process.
Foreign Affairs, however, distanced itself entirely. Deputy Minister for Administration Gabriel Selee told lawmakers the Ministry was unaware of the agreement and “was not a part of it,” denying any involvement in negotiations or oversight of the CAA or the Implementation Agreement that supposedly forms its legal basis.
The hearing, convened by the Specialized Committee investigating the status of the Liberia–Guinea Implementation Agreement, quickly exposed a critical gap: Liberia ratified the agreement in 2021, but Guinea has not. The revelation left Representatives Jeremiah Sokan, Ivar Jones, Dorwon Gleekia, and Marcus Thomas visibly stunned, as the agreement is intended to govern all cross-border use of Liberia’s rail and port infrastructure.
Deputy Minister of Justice for Economic Affairs, Cllr. Charles F. D. Karmo II, repeatedly defended the legality of the Implementation Agreement yet avoided confirming whether Guinea had ratified it. When Rep. Ivar Jones asked directly, “Have our Guinean counterparts ratified this agreement up to date?” the answer never came.
Jones pushed harder, reminding him that the agreement is binding only on Liberia since “the Guinean Legislature has not ratified it.” He then pressed whether Liberia had even transmitted the ratified agreement to Guinea. Cllr. Karmo admitted it had not been sent, offering only that “Guinea and Liberian laws are not the same.” At one point he attempted to justify the government’s inactivity by saying, “We were trying to send a team to Guinea, but something happened.”
His responses clashed sharply with the structure of the 2019 Implementation Agreement, which lays out a meticulous, bilateral approval process for any Guinean company seeking access to Liberia’s rail and port facilities. The agreement requires Guinea to first determine a company’s eligibility, followed by Liberia’s review through a joint Monitoring Committee and the Inter-Ministerial Committee. It also mandates a standardized Access Agreement template — a safeguard intended to prevent one-off deals and ensure fairness.
None of these steps appear to have been followed in the case of the CAA with Ivanhoe Liberia. There is no evidence of Guinea completing an eligibility review, no record of an access request submitted to Liberia, no Monitoring Committee minutes, no IMC approval, and no confirmation that the CAA complies with the required template. Lawmakers took notice.
Representative Dorwon Gleekia questioned whether Guinea had ever granted explicit consent for its ore to transit Liberia, given that Guinea has already constructed its own railway. Cllr. Karmo responded only that SMFG — Ivanhoe’s subsidiary in Guinea — had obtained a mining permit. Gleekia countered with Article 3.3 of the Implementation Agreement, which states: “Neither Party shall sign any contract or undertake any action that directly or indirectly restricts or prevents the full effect of this Agreement.”
The hearing took a sharper turn when Representative Jeremiah Sokan criticized the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for failing to advise the Legislature on Guinea’s non-ratification before approving the deal. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not advise this Legislature and did not even inform the Guineans in line with what we have ratified here. For me, that is disappointing,” Sokan said.
The committee suspended the hearing and instructed all witnesses to return next Tuesday as the investigation intensifies — with lawmakers now seeking clarity on not only the status of the Implementation Agreement, but also on how a multi-billion-dollar cross-border concession was advanced without the Ministry responsible for diplomacy, treaties, and international coordination.
Meanwhile, on December 10, 2025, the Millennium Challenge Corporation will announce a new Compact with Liberia worth over $500 million. This transformative grant represents years of diplomatic effort by Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow-Nyanti and President Joseph Nyuma Boakai. Yet in Monrovia’s corridors of power, a troubling narrative has taken hold: that High Power Exploration (HPX)/Ivanhoe Atlantic—a mining company with commercial interests in Liberia’s rail infrastructure —somehow secured this achievement and that ratification of the company’s Concession and Access Agreement (CAA) is linked to the Compact’s approval.
This narrative, if believed by Liberian officials, fundamentally distorts the nation’s negotiating position and undermines the Legislature’s ability to independently evaluate an agreement with profound sovereignty implications. More troubling still, this appears to be a pattern—one that already played out in July 2025 with strikingly similar tactics that led to the singing of the CAA.
The July Precedent: A Manufactured Crisis
According to sources familiar with the matter, President Boakai had a planned meeting with President Donald Trump in July 2025—a significant diplomatic engagement arranged through normal bilateral channels. Yet in the days before this meeting, Liberian officials reportedly received intense pressure from Ivanhoe and local US Embassy staff to sign the CAA immediately, with specific claims that HPX had arranged the Trump meeting and that the agreement needed to be signed Sunday night as a “deliverable” before the President’s Monday departure.
Under this reported pressure, officials moved to accommodate the demand, treating the CAA signing as linked to the meeting’s success. The reality? President Boakai subsequently learned—after arriving in the United States—that the linkage had been misrepresented. The meeting had been arranged through standard diplomatic channels. No HPX-related deliverable was required or expected. Furthermore, in a meeting with MCC leadership during this trip, President Boakai was reportedly told explicitly that HPX had no role in the Compact decision-making process.
If these accounts are accurate, they reveal a troubling pattern: manufactured urgency based on alleged influence that, upon examination, proves illusory. The question now is whether this pattern is repeating itself with the December 10 announcement.
Understanding the MCC Reality
The notion that HPX secured Liberia’s MCC Compact is not merely questionable—it is institutionally and legally implausible. The Millennium Challenge Corporation operates under the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003, which requires that eligibility be determined through objective performance indicators across governance, social investment, and economic freedom categories. Countries must score above the median on at least half the indicators in each category and demonstrate strong performance on corruption control.
No amount of private lobbying disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act can override a country’s objective performance on these indicators. The process is designed specifically to be immune to commercial influence.
HPX’s presence in Washington is documented through a Lobbying Disclosure Act filing made by Yorktown Solutions. However, this filing reveals the limitations of HPX’s activities: it focuses on “the geopolitical importance of iron ore” and the Nimba-Buchanan corridor—issues directly tied to HPX’s commercial interests. Critically, the filing does not mention the MCC Compact, and there is no public record showing HPX lobbied MCC on Liberia’s behalf.
The legitimate channel for representing Liberia’s interests in Washington is the Foreign Agents Registration Act filing made by the Republic of Liberia in June 2024, under which a state-funded agent advances Liberia’s national priorities. HPX’s LDA filing is exactly what it appears to be: a commercial lobbying effort to advance the company’s private business interests, not Liberia’s national interests.
Historical and Comparative Evidence
The HPX narrative collapses under the weight of straightforward evidence. Liberia previously received and successfully implemented an MCC Compact from 2016 to 2021—long before HPX established its current presence in the country. Liberia demonstrated its ability to meet MCC criteria independently, without any mining company claiming credit.
Moreover, numerous countries have been selected for MCC Compacts without any HPX presence: Senegal, Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire, and Zambia, among others. If MCC Compact selection required HPX’s involvement, how did these countries succeed without the company’s presence? The answer is obvious: HPX has nothing to do with MCC eligibility.
Liberia’s MCC Compact is the result of sustained policy reforms, governance improvements, Foreign Minister Beysolow-Nyanti’s diplomatic efforts, and President Boakai’s leadership—not the lobbying of a mining company with no authority over Liberia’s policy indicators.
The Geographic Logic: What HPX Really Wants
HPX’s focus on Liberia—rather than Guinea or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where its primary mining assets are located—reveals the company’s true strategic interest. HPX has major iron ore deposits in Guinea’s EuroNimba region and mining operations in the DRC. The company needs Liberia not primarily as a mining location, but as a transit corridor for mineral exports from Guinea.
The Concession and Access Agreement would secure HPX’s access to Liberia’s rail infrastructure and port facilities to support operations located elsewhere. This geographic reality undermines any narrative that HPX is deeply invested in Liberia’s development for its own sake. If HPX truly had the influence over U.S. policy that it allegedly claims, one would expect it to leverage that influence for MCC Compacts in Guinea or the DRC—where its primary commercial interests lie. The fact that it focuses attention on Liberia, the transit state, reveals a narrow commercial agenda centered on rail and port access.
Political Arbitrage: Exploiting Information Gaps
The pattern of behavior attributed to HPX can be characterized as political arbitrage—the exploitation of information and power asymmetries for commercial gain. The formula appears straightforward: create perceived linkage between commercial interests (the CAA) and national interests (MCC Compact, presidential meetings); leverage information gaps about how U.S. lobbying and policy actually work; manufacture urgency through strategic timing; exploit official fears of damaging relations with the United States; and secure commercial concessions that might not withstand scrutiny under normal circumstances.
A central element enabling this alleged exploitation is widespread misunderstanding among Liberian officials about how Washington operates. Many reportedly believe that resisting HPX could trigger pressure from the U.S. government, that an “American” company automatically enjoys Washington’s protection, or that HPX could influence sanctions decisions. These fears, whether grounded in reality or not, create negotiating leverage.
Questions have also been raised about the role of the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia in reinforcing narratives about HPX’s influence or the urgency of CAA ratification. If Embassy officials conveyed—directly or by implication—that the MCC Compact or presidential meetings were conditional on CAA ratification, and if those representations were false, it would represent a serious concern about the proper boundaries of commercial advocacy by diplomatic missions.
The December 10 Test
The MCC announcement scheduled for December 10 represents more than a policy decision—it is a test of the narratives that have shaped Liberia’s negotiations with HPX. When the Compact is announced as expected, approved based on Liberia’s independent merits, it will prove that HPX did not secure the Compact for Liberia, that the alleged linkage between CAA ratification and MCC approval was false, and that Liberian officials have been negotiating under false premises.
The critical question then becomes: What happens next? Will HPX acknowledge that the alleged linkage was false? Will there be accountability for the pressure tactics reportedly used? Will the Legislature reconsider the CAA with a clear understanding that no external pressure justified rushed ratification? Or will new narratives emerge, new pressures be manufactured, new “emergencies” requiring immediate action?
If HPX claimed influence over the Trump meeting (allegedly disproven) and claims influence over the MCC Compact (likely to be disproven December 10), then every future claim of influence or urgency should be viewed with profound skepticism and verified through independent channels before being credited.
What the Legislature Must Do
Before any CAA ratification vote proceeds, the Legislature should take decisive action. First, delay any vote until after December 10, when the MCC announcement will clarify whether the alleged linkage exists. Second, demand official clarifications: request that the U.S. Embassy confirm whether MCC Compact approval is conditional on CAA ratification, that MCC officials explain the basis for Liberia’s eligibility, and that the Executive provide a full accounting of representations made about HPX’s influence.
Third, establish verification protocols. Before accepting claims about foreign influence or policy linkages, officials should verify through direct communication with relevant U.S. government agencies, review of public lobbying disclosure documents, and consultation with independent experts. The cost of believing false narratives is not merely embarrassment—it is the surrender of sovereign decision-making to manufactured pressure.
Conclusion: Sovereignty and Accountability
Foreign Minister Beysolow-Nyanti and President Boakai have done the hard work of governance reform and diplomatic engagement that earned Liberia its MCC Compact. They deserve full credit for this achievement. HPX/Ivanhoe Atlantic, whatever its legitimate commercial interests in Liberia’s mining sector, should not be allowed to hijack their accomplishment or exploit it for negotiating leverage based on false premises.
On December 10, 2025, when the MCC announces Liberia’s Compact—earned through merit, not purchased through lobbying—let that be the beginning of a new chapter. A chapter in which Liberia negotiates from strength, makes decisions based on facts, and refuses to surrender its sovereignty to manufactured pressure.
The question posed in this article remains: After December 10, when the alleged MCC-CAA linkage is disproven, what will be HPX’s next manufactured urgency? The answer will reveal whether we are dealing with isolated misconceptions or a systematic pattern of exploitation that must be confronted and ended.
Sovereignty is not merely the absence of foreign occupation. It is the capacity to make decisions based on accurate information, independent assessment, and national interest rather than manufactured fear and false narratives. The Liberian people and their elected representatives deserve nothing less.
Truth matters. Sovereignty matters. Accountability matters. December 10 will prove that Liberia earned its MCC Compact on its own merits. The Legislature must ensure that this truth shapes every decision that follows.
