Published: August 17, 2026
MONROVIA – Assets worth about US$104,900 that state auditors could not verify at three farming enterprises are in place and in use, visits by The Liberian Investigator found, narrowing what the audit raised at those sites to a failure of record-keeping rather than a loss of property.
The General Auditing Commission cited the assets in the management letter accompanying its audit of the financial statements of the Smallholder Agriculture Transformation and Agribusiness Revitalization Project for the period ended Oct. 31, 2025. A management letter records internal control weaknesses. The commission did not report the assets as missing or misappropriated.
In Grand Bassa County, the audit said roughly US$68,000 in fixed assets bought for the Cheenah Group of Companies under Component 3 for oil-palm processing had not been coded when auditors visited. The items were a 5.2-ton Isuzu mini truck at US$29,500, two motorized tricycles at US$10,600, a TVS motorbike at US$2,000 and about US$25,900 in oil-palm processing equipment.
At the company’s site in District 4B, the major equipment carried identification codes. The truck was marked MOA-STAR-P-02-01-CGC-GB and the tricycles MOA-STAR-P-02-02-CGC-GB and MOA-STAR-P-02-03-CGC-GB. Also present were two boilers, a palm-fruit thresher and crusher, and a butter clarification tank. Management produced procurement documents and said the assets had been coded before the GAC verification, a direct contradiction of the audit finding. The GAC did not respond to a request for comment.
“All the equipment and supplies provided to us are accounted for; they are available, and nothing, not one single thing, is missing,” Chief Executive Officer James Whawhen Jr. said.
Technical Manager Zeon Whawhen identified two grass cutters and two palm cutters that management said had been coded but did not appear in the audit report.
The company runs a 150-acre palm farm with capacity to process about 2.5 metric tons of palm oil a day. Management said the road to the farm has not been worked on in about three years, and that some equipment is kept in Buchanan because machinery cannot easily be moved over it. The truck and a motorcycle were parked there during the visit. The round trip to the facility took more than 12 hours.
In Grand Cape Mount County, the audit said US$33,500 in assets at TOTAG Farm in Pokundu, Tewor District, was not made available for physical verification. The items were a 10-by-20-foot cold-storage unit at US$11,000, a 10-kilowatt solar grid at US$10,000 and an 8-by-20-foot shade-net greenhouse. All were at the farm, some still in their original cartons. Owner Tonieh Alpha Gwoah said she was away because of an emergency when auditors came. The farm grows vegetables, irrigating from the Mano River, and the equipment forms part of a matching grant of about US$137,000 awarded in 2024 under the Liberia Agriculture Commercialization Fund.
In Lofa County, the audit cited two TVS motorbikes at US$2,100 and a TVS JIVE 100cc at US$1,300 at Kaming Cooperative Society Limited. Officials at the cooperative said the motorcycles were off-site when auditors came and so could not be inspected.
The project is led by the Ministry of Agriculture and financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development to support smallholder farmers and agricultural commercialization. Neither the project management unit nor the ministry responded to questions about asset coding and inventory control.
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