Monrovia— The Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), has termed as laughable and futile, a smear media campaign alleging corruption in its handling and management of revenue generated from Liberia’s international telecommunications gateway monitoring system, following the suspension of the Telecommunications International Alliance (TIA) concession.
On an apparent blackmail and extortion mission, some usual hired guns, purporting to be anti-corruption advocates, have alleged that revenue from the international call monitoring service is managed in a non-transparent manner, and that procurement processes are questionable, claiming further that management of revenue generated therefrom lacks any process of accountability.
The Board of Commissioners of the LTA has described these allegations as the continuation of failed attempts to distract it from ongoing reform measures aimed at restoring confidence in the sensitive regulatory authority of telecommunications after years of poor oversight.
The LTA has meanwhile called on the public not to give attention to those it referred to as beneficiaries and promoters of shady deals and a lack of standard regulations.
After President Joseph Nyuma Boakai suspended the monitoring contract held by Telecoms International Alliance, Inc. (TIA) in October 2025, the LTA temporarily assumed direct operation of the gateway monitoring system, confirming that this period generated substantial revenue, and said it is providing this update to be clear about exactly how money generated has served the larger purpose of the country unlike the past.
The LTA said it welcomes an independent audit of the account at any time because it operates with transparency and accountability in keeping with the laws controlling it. LTA has boasted its own performance during the period it ran the system directly, saying it demonstrates that LTA staff are capable of operating the gateway monitoring function without extended dependence on an outside contractor, a point it says supports the shorter, three-year training and transfer timeline under discussion for any future arrangement.
On questions about procurement documentation for any new arrangement, the LTA said it would provide a direct status update through the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission.
The Authority said it would cooperate fully with any audit of its financial records as an institution committed to government and public accountability.
The LTA maintained that TIA had operated illegally and denied the country legitimate revenue by changing their contract from 35% to 49% and from 8 to 20 years, making US$50 Million in six years and therefore cannot stand the correction and reform the current LTA Board of Commissioners is carrying on, part of which ensures the current NUMTEL JV NUMBASE contract is 40% for the company and 60% for government as opposed to the previous TIA arrangements.
LTA said it is fully aware that during the process of transparency and accountability-driven reform, the spoiled system will fight back as can be clearly seen in the ongoing baseless corruption allegation campaign being paraded by people who have no understanding of how the sector works.
The authority has repeated its commitment to continuously place in the public domain, vital and needed information, including all legal and necessary instruments governing its operation and regulatory scope, while vowing to shed light through every dark tunnel designed to undermine the sector and rob the country of needed revenue.
This, the LTA added, will include helping government identify and undo any fraudulent and non-performing contracts, including business arrangements that fall under its oversight, as was done in the case of the suspension of the TIA agreement, one of the most controversial contracts ever awarded in post-war Liberia, whose terms, timing, and awarding of the International Traffic Monitoring Services are still a grave error.
President Joseph Nyuma Boakai suspended the TIA deal through Executive Order No. 154 issued on October 31, 2025, immediately halting the telecommunications traffic monitoring contract following what the Executive Mansion described as damning audit and investigative reports from the General Auditing Commission (GAC) and the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC). Both bodies found serious irregularities and evidence of fraud in the contract’s award and execution. The findings show the contract was awarded to TIA against the recommendation of the Public Procurement and Concessions Commission (PPCC), in violation of Section 32 of the PPCC Act of 2010. Investigators further found that TIA was incorporated in the State of Delaware within days of receiving the bid documents, and was not incorporated in Liberia until nearly ten months after being awarded the contract. The LTA has been directed to cease all further implementation of the TIA contract, while the Ministry of Justice has been instructed to pursue the matter under the Penal Code and the rule of law.”Recognizing the national security and financial implications of telecommunications traffic monitoring, President Boakai has directed that the LTA and PPCC immediately engage a qualified service provider in compliance with procurement laws to ensure continuity of service,” the Executive Mansion said in its release. The Executive Branch will also notify the Legislature and seek appropriate legislative action to de-ratify any prior enactments relating to the suspended contract.
The intervention by GAC and LACC followed a resolution passed by the LTA’s current Board of Commissioners which called for a review of the TIA contract and its repeal by the Legislature. The LTA Board, chaired by former Lofa County Representative and former Chair of the Committee on Investment and Concession, Clarence K. Massaquoi, based its resolution on a review process that found procurement laws and other legal requirements were ignored and violated in awarding the contract. This followed repeated questions about the contract’s validity, legitimacy, and compliance status. Other stakeholders and industry experts had also shared the concern that Liberia has been, or is being, cheated through what was described as a fraudulent procurement process.
Documented records, including findings from the GAC and LACC investigations and sources within the telecommunications sector, the LTA’s relationship with outside monitoring contractors did not begin with TIA. In 2011, Global Voice Group (GVG), a Spanish company, and CONNEX Liberia were jointly awarded a five-year Build-Operate-Transfer contract to establish a telecom traffic monitoring system for the LTA. The contract was extended by two years, ending in June 2018, at which point GVG handed over to the LTA all equipment purchased, installed, and used in the monitoring operation, and had trained LTA staff to take over the system, transferring knowledge and building technical capacity for a cost-effective, productive outcome, but rather than operate the system and retain the revenue for the country, the LTA’s past leadership (in the immediate past administration) instead issued a new contract through restricted bidding. Under Restricted Bid document LTA/RB/006/18/19, bid documents were issued to five firms: Stratum Telecom, Telecoms International Alliance (TIA), Waterlane Services, Zone Voice, and SIGOS, but only two, Stratum Telecoms and TIA, submitted bids by the deadline of July 24, 2018, at 2:00 p.m.
Records also show that TIA was formed in Delaware, USA, on June 15, 2018, the same day bid documents were issued, but was controversially among the firms served with those documents. This was a clear conflict with Sections 50(1)(a) and 51(1) of the Public Procurement and Concessions Act, which permit restricted bidding only when goods, works, or services are available from a limited number of bidders, and require that all known qualified suppliers be invited.
TIA’s bid price was US$9.275 million, or 35 percent of expected revenue. The LTA constituted a seven-member Bid Evaluation Panel (BEP). Nearly two months after issuing bid documents and receiving tenders, and after the BEP had already been formed, the LTA requested and received PPCC approval to use restricted bidding, meaning the bidding process was carried out before the procurement method itself was approved, in violation of Section 24(1)(c) of the PPCC Act, which requires the Executive Director to approve the procurement method in advance. In its evaluation report, the BEP declared TIA’s bid the most responsive and named it the winner, citing TIA’s bid as 35 percent of expected revenue without recording the underlying US$9.275 million figure. The LTA’s Procurement Committee endorsed the BEP’s recommendation to award the contract to TIA. Under Section 37 of the PPCC Act, a procuring entity must promptly notify the Commission of each contract awarded, including the reference number, contract price, the winning bidder’s name and address, a description of the goods or services procured, and the procurement method used. In its request for PPCC’s no-objection, the LTA cited a contract value of three million United States dollars per year over six years. In response, PPCC’s Director of Compliance flagged multiple inconsistencies with the Executive Director, including the absence of specific references in the bid documents, no indication of TIA’s required financial capacity, no audited financial statements, bank statements, or other proof of financial viability, incomplete bid-opening minutes as to whether bidders submitted required eligibility documents, missing titles and qualifications for key staff, a BEP report that passed TIA through preliminary evaluation without the required audited financials or relevant experience documentation, and ambiguity in both the contract price and duration.
Instead of addressing these queries, the LTA issued a notification of contract award on August 16, 2018, without the PPCC approval it had itself requested. The two parties negotiated the contract on August 29, 2018, and signed it on August 31, 2018, giving LTA 51 percent and TIA 49 percent of revenue for the first four years, shifting to LTA 55 percent and TIA 45 percent for the following four years. This revenue split differs from the 35 percent figure TIA had stated in its original bid, and no record explains the increase. Records further show that when TIA failed to meet key milestones, including training obligations that would have allowed LTA staff to inherit the system, with no accountability assigned for the failure, the contract was amended to reinstate TIA’s share at 49 percent instead of the scheduled 45 percent, while extending the remaining term from four years to twenty. To date, the LTA’s Legal and Procurement sections hold no record of how this amendment was processed, and there is no indication it received PPCC approval. The original August 31, 2018 contract predates the LTA’s 2021 Floor Price Order, which established a 9 percent Regulatory Fee. That fee has nonetheless been shared with TIA at the same 51/49 split, with no record establishing any relationship or contractual basis connecting TIA to it.
The General Auditing Commission, in its Special Investigative Audit, requested proof of this relationship and received none. GAC raised the issue again in its Management Letter and discussed it with current and former Commissioners and staff during the exit conference; the relationship remains unestablished in the Auditor General’s 2024 report. The LTA’s Legal and Procurement sections also hold no record of this arrangement ever being processed as a concession, no indication of Inter-Ministerial Concessions Committee review, and no PPCC approval on file. There is likewise no record of new investment or investment requirements tied to the amended contract. Notably, when the current Board took office, no training had been conducted under the TIA contract. In 2024, under the current Board, four LTA technical staff were sent to Ghana for a two-week training, the first substantive training activity on record since the arrangement began. Perhaps the most striking figure to emerge from this record: TIA’s original bid was US$9.275 million, yet the company has received more than US$50 million to date. This stands against the earlier precedent. Under the Global Voice Group contract that preceded TIA, the Spanish firm operated the monitoring system from 2011 to 2016 under a five-year Build-Operate-Transfer agreement, training LTA staff throughout and leaving them capable of running the system on its expiration. By the time the TIA contract was signed in 2018, LTA had already operated the system independently for two years on the equipment GVG had installed and handed over.
It can be recalled that during the confirmation hearing for the current LTA Board of Commissioners, senators pressed the nominees on why government, through the LTA, was still outsourcing the monitoring operation, and whether, after nearly fourteen years of foreign-run operation, there remained any need to transfer knowledge and transition the system fully to LTA staff. Telecommunications experts, revenue analysts, and other Liberians have voiced concern over the continued reliance on foreign firms to run a system this central to national revenue, and over the lack of transparency in how that revenue has been managed. With the TIA contract suspended, the question that emerged was what new, more beneficial arrangement the LTA Board and the Legislature would put in place, and how this critical function, and the revenue tied to it, will finally be managed to benefit the country and its people.
While the LTA pushes to ensure that this important revenue source is protected against a repeat of the ill management of the past, the authority believes this effort is being fought against by those who have benefited from the previous illegal operations, something the LTA has vowed to resist through every legally necessary means.
