Monrovia – It still bears the name of BET founder-turned-billionaire, developer and financier, Robert L. Johnson, but the RLJ Hotel Resorts & Villas, a US$10 million, 85-room facility, off Liberia’s Robertsfield highway, one of the first major investments to emerge in the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf-led government appears to have been sold for apparently the second time since it was opened in June 2009.
Report by Rodney D. Sieh, [email protected]
An investigation by FrontPageAfrica has found that the hotel is the midst of changing ownership with the Coconut Grove Hotels, Ghana already in the process of managing the hotel and have already replaced several senior Liberian managers with Ghanaians.
At least one former Human Resources manager reportedly has a case against the hotel at the Ministry of Labor, Minister Neto Lighe confirmed to FrontPageAfrica recently.
No New Permits, Says Labor Minister
Asked whether he was aware that the new management had laid off several employees and replaced Liberian managers with Ghanaians, the minister said his ministry had not received any new requests for work permits, suggesting that he was not in the know.
But on a recent visit to the facility, a FrontPageAfrica reporter noticed a few Ghanaians who were performing managerial roles, dressed in Ghanaian fabrics.
The new management is being tight-lipped over the report, first referring FrontPageAfrica to the General Manager and then back to Mr. Ambrose Houphouet, General Manager at the Liberia Enterprise Development Finance Company (LEDFC), said to be responsible for transitioning the transfer of ownership.
Mr. Houphouet, who was contacted earlier, demanded the source of the information before commenting, when FPA declined, he referred us to the hotel manager who was out at the time of the inquiry but a deputy referred us back to Houphouet.
After much pressing, Mr. Houphouet finally, reluctantly said that the management, whoever it is, is in the process of preparing a communication on the new ownership but declined to elaborate further.
RLJ Name Stays in Tact, Source Says
FrontPageAfrica has been informed that as part of the transfer of ownership arrangement, the new owners have to maintain the RLJ name on the hotel but will not take on debts plus salaries and benefits accrued by the previous owners.
Because everyone, including the new management and Liberian government officials are tight-lipped, it is unclear whether the government received its fifteen percent withholding tax as required under the Public Financial Management(PFM) law and the Revenue Code.
Madam Elfreda Tamba, head of the Liberia Revenue Authority(LRA) did not return an email seeking comment.
Under Section 201 of Revenue Code of Liberia, capital gains on sale of business or assets is taxed at personal income tax rate requiring the LRA to collect taxes on such sale.
Section 201 Taxable Income states: “(b) Gross Income. Gross income for income tax purpose means the aggregate of all income earned, from wherever source derived by a tax payer during a tax year. Examples of items included in gross income are: (3) non-exempt interest, rents, royalties, and non-exempt dividends; (6) gain on the disposition of property (whether real or personal, tangible or intangible) used in a business or held for investment (including gain sometimes called “capital gain”).”
When FrontPageAfrica visited the hotel last weekend, a few tables had brochures with information about the new management, Coconut Grove Hotels, Accra.
Coconut Grove is part of a chain of businesses owned by Ghanaian politician Paa Kwesi Nduom.
The mother company, Group Nduom, last year acquired First International Bank and rebranded it as GN Bank. LEDFC is also operated by Group Ndoum.
In October 2010, employees at the hotel displayed placards and barricaded the main entrance of the resort in demand of salary increase and other incentives, which they claim management had denied them for so long.
The protesters, claiming to be employees of the resort, waved placards that read, “Increase Our Salaries”, and “Father Destroy Their Plans.”
Johnson, Chairman of The RLJ Companies, opened the hotel doors to much fanfare in 2009 amid a stormy controversy as many took the government to task for replacing one of the nation’s iconic cultural establishments with a hotel resort.
At the time of its opening, Mr. Johnson trumpeted the hotel as poised to play a critical role in Liberia’s reconstruction and economic development efforts put forth by President Sirleaf aimed at rebuilding and revitalizing Liberia.
NIC Mute Over Details of Reported Sale
The National Investment Commission (NIC) remains tight-lipped on the deal, despite several attempts made by FPA to ascertain whether they are in the know of the transfer of ownership.
The billionaire pitched the hotel as a first of its kind in Africa, when he spoke to the Washington Post in 2008.
“There is no hotel in West Africa like this. This will be a Class-A beachfront property, with great views from the bar and restaurant out to the ocean.”
“This really is going to be something.”
But residents saw it differently.
In April 2008, police forcibly disbursed students of Kendeja high school, which had been demolished to make room for the hotel.
The Kendeja Culture Center was established in the early 1960’s as a means of showcasing Liberia’s rich cultural heritage through performing arts.
For years, it was the home of the Liberian National Cultural Troupe (LNCT) till 2008 when the RLJ & Companies demolished the shrine to build a hotel resort there.
A year earlier, in early 2007, Johnson visited Liberia, and Johnson Sirleaf asked him to consider building a hotel.
“Given the long historical relationship between our two countries,” Johnson was quoted by the Post, “I believe passionately that African Americans have a responsibility to support Liberia much like Jewish Americans back Israel.”
The Sirleaf administration was instrumental in finding the site at Kendeja which was greeted by a fiery storm.
The government through Andrew Tehmeh, an Assistant Minister of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism(MICAT) during a 2009 visit to US, defended the move at the time by stating that the “RLJ & Companies” owner of Kendeja Hotel Resort would pay an annual fee of “US$800.000 to the government of Liberia” for a period of 50 years, beginning the year 2008, meaning the first contract is expected to end 2057, with a possibility for renewal just like the case with Liberia and the Firestone Rubber Plantation Company in Margibi.
It is unclear whether the new management will follow through on the deal as the reported sale has been conducted under a cloud of secrecy. But in 2015, several artists from Liberia residing in the U.S., threatened begin a legal process aimed at recovering the country’s National Cultural Shrine – Kendeja, sold to the US billionaire.
The hotel was reportedly sold previously to a South African company a few years ago, also under a cloud of secrecy, although FrontPageAfrica has been unable to verify as management and the government has remained tight-lipped.
The Concordia Academy based in Roseville, Minnesota has been trying to start the process by filing a petition against Johnson-Sirleaf’s government.
James Fasuekoi, one of the advocates for the suit told FrontPageAfrica Wednesday that organizers are waiting to get the group’s next festival underway and put things together. Fasuekoi says a lot of former artists who were brought up at Kendeja including Fatu Gayflor and Tarloh Quiwonkpa have expressed their support.
As part of an arrangement, the government agreed to build a new cultural center but that project in Boys’ Town has reportedly been abandoned.
The RLJ hotel & resort site on the Atlantic coastline, had previously drawn the interest of a Saudi prince who had expressed interest in but never committed to. Ground was broken in March, and with a labor force of 500 Liberian workers, who took 12 months to complete.
Cloud of Secrecy Worries Observers
In April this year, the reported new owners of RLJ, the Coconut Grove Hotel in Accra was the subject of a major investigation after fire outbreak which took the combined efforts of personnel from the Ghana National Fire Service and the Fire Department of the Ghana Air Force more than three hours to contain.
Managers of the hotel were quoted by the ModernGhana online publication as saying that the fire was sparked by fire from an air-conditioning facility at Amansan Television (ATV) which shares a compound with the hotel.
Liberia has a free enterprise system of economy and while the government has presented itself as having an open attitude toward foreign direct investment, and made starting a business easier by eliminating business license fees, which has reduced total cost of business registration, many local businesses have complained that the government gives more priority and incentives to foreign business.
Business observers say the cloud of secrecy regarding the reported sale of the RLJ hotel which replaced an iconic Liberian cultural haven, just eight years after its launch, is mind boggling as no one knows the details of what the new arrangement entails and whether the promises made by the US billionaire at the onset of the hotel’s arrival will be kept.
But more importantly, business observers are concerned over the secrecy and why no Liberian companies were given opportunities to explore investment options.