and even took a loan of an additional facility of Two Million Five Hundred Thousand
Dollars ($2,500,000) dollars to sustain it.
According to the plaintiff, at the time the Defendant illegally halted its operations
it had hauled over One Hundred and Twenty Seven thousand cubic metre
(127,000m3) of trees from the forest reserve from January 5th through the end of
March of 2008. The logs were located in 2 log yards in Bandadoro, 2 log yards in
Sumbaria, the main Company log yard in Masingbi, and Plaintiff’s log yard inside
the Port. The Plaintiff had again loaded over 600 x 40’ containers for export. All the
logs inside the yard were either stolen or burnt as a result of Defendant’s abrupt
illegal censorship of the Plaintiff’s operations. The Plaintiff had sold three thousand,
one hundred ninety four point fifty seven cubic metre (3,194.57m3 ) of mixed
species logs to a Chinese buyer prior to the ban. Although the Defendant eventually
allowed the export, the Chinese buyers’ Letters of Credit (LC) expired due to the
repeated delays and they refused to pay for the logs after they arrived in China.
Consequently, the Plaintiff lost over Four Million, Five Hundred Thousand US
Dollars ($4,500,000) due to the interference by the Defendant’s agencies.
It is the case of the Plaintiff that without the frustration of the agreement, the
Plaintiff would have planted forty million (40,000,000) teak trees in ten (10) years.
The teak plantations would have comprised an area of eighty thousand plus
(80,000+) hectares with a projected business plan of employing thousands of Sierra
Leoneans in industries like nurseries, tree planting, logging, sawmilling, and
plywood production, in an area of the country that has a small population, with
virtually no industry and subsequent high unemployment rate.
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