Sierra Rutile Limited In Hot Waters
The Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee has intensified scrutiny on Sierra Rutile Limited (SRL), following a field investigation into serious allegations of crop destruction and unpaid compensation at Victoria Village in Imperri Chiefdom, Bonthe District. The visit, chaired by Hon. Musa Fofana of Kono District on Wednesday, 19 November 2025, exposed disturbing gaps in transparency, accountability, and trust between the mining company and its host communities.
The Committee’s intervention followed formal complaints from landowners, who accused SRL of destroying their crops during exploration and refusing to honour compensation commitments, despite repeated community engagements. What was initially labeled by the company as a technical disagreement, has now grown into a full-scale credibility crisis.
At the site, lawmakers discovered that SRL had dismissed all of its crop assessors responsible for counting and documenting the damaged farms. This raised immediate red flags, as the very individuals who generated the data used to justify payments were removed without independent review. Areas previously described by the company as “grassland”, were found to still contain standing crops, deepening suspicion about the integrity of the company’s classification process.
One of the dismissed assessors, Mohamed Massaquoi, publicly challenged SRL’s narrative, alleging that the sackings were unlawful and aimed at covering operational inconsistencies. He revealed that the area was initially classified as an “off-book” zone not slated for mining, only for the company to later re-enter and resume exploration before abruptly abandoning the site when results were deemed commercially unviable. According to him, all five assessors were dismissed after the company changed its position, leaving them scapegoated for internal failures.
The Regent Chief of Imperri Chiefdom, Chief Leslie Tucker-Thomas, delivered one of the strongest rebukes of SRL, accusing the company of bad faith negotiations and technological manipulation. He insisted that the original agreement was grounded in physical, community-based assessments, but that SRL later switched to satellite and drone evaluations midway through the process without community consent. He described this shift as a deliberate tactic to undermine compensation and disregard traditional authority.
SRL, attempting to defend its position, presented figures claiming it assessed 994 farms across 9 hectares containing over 28,000 crops valued at Le4.16 billion (old Leones). However, the company admitted that internal reviews later labeled these figures “inflated by 45%,” a confession that only deepened concerns about how such inflated figures were generated in the first place, and why safeguards were not in place.
The company further acknowledged paying only Le2.3 billion while freezing the remaining Le1.8 billion after firing its own assessors. Yet the Committee strongly questioned why innocent farmers should suffer delays because of the company’s internal failures. The absence of independent oversight from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and the National Minerals Agency (NMA) was also flagged as a major institutional failure, exposing regulatory weakness and potential complicity through silence.
Although SRL cited falling global rutile prices as justification for its current financial hardship, lawmakers were unconvinced that market fluctuations should be used to excuse broken commitments to vulnerable rural communities.
The Committee described the situation as one of the most serious breakdowns of corporate-community relations in recent mining history, warning that the matter will not be swept under the carpet. Members confirmed that a comprehensive and forceful report will be submitted to Parliament, with recommendations for sanctions, policy reforms, and possible legal action to ensure that landowners are not sacrificed for corporate convenience.
The Ad Hoc Committee made it clear that this investigation is only the beginning, and that accountability, restitution, and justice for the affected communities will be pursued to the fullest extent of parliamentary authority.
