EITI suspends Sierra Leone

The system set up to ensure accountability and transparency in the mining sector around the world has suspended Sierra Leone because the country failed, for the second time, to meet its benchmarks in disclosing facts and figures of mining companies and their activities. The country’s performance in attaining these was said to be unsatisfactory. The decision was reached last night at a Board Meeting in Oslo, Norway of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Detail was scanty as we went to press last night. This despite assurances by State House that the country would be EITI compliant by 2012. Burkina Faso and Republic of The Congo were accepted. Responding to the suspension, the chairman of the civil society representatives on the Multi Stakeholders Group (MSG) which also includes mining companies and government said he was “not surprised”. Dr Olagide Thomas told Politico that there had been “a lack of political will” to push the process forward. He said President Ernest Bai Koroma had twice let them down when he failed to show up for the launch of the second Validation Report last year despite assurances he had given that he would do so. He said the president also boycotted, at the last minute, an EITI conference in Paris in 2011. He also said that the MSG had issues with the validation report which failed to meet the expectations of the EITI Board. A Validator who visited the country recently noticed that it could only meet 15 of the 21 requirements set out. One of the key sticky points was the “Materiality Threshold”. This means that despite US$ 4,000 having been benchmarked for disclosure some mining companies had paid exploration licences in excess of the amount but that such had not been disclosed. Another civil society representative on the MSG also told Politico that they noticed that some companies to local councils and chiefs without disclosure of these payments. A source at the EITI Board meeting in Oslo last night told Politico that that was deemed “a serious weakness which defeats the whole essence of EITI set up on the basis of disclosure and transparency”. Sierra Leone signed up to the EITI in 2006, a process that ensures mining companies do full disclosure of their assets and payments to the state, while government must also disclose what it receives from these companies.