Saa Saamoi
Commissioner
Department of Customs
A customs professional with over ten years of service with the Customs Administration of Liberia, Mr. Saa Saamoi is the Customs Commissioner at the Liberia Revenue Authority. He made his public service debut in 2009 having had a very short spell as Acting Special Assistant to the Minister of Finance of Liberia. In the same year, he was appointed the first Assistant Commissioner of Customs for Urban Ports Operations in the Bureau of Customs & Excise with oversight of the Freeport of Monrovia, the Roberts International Airport, James Spriggs Payne International Airport, the Government’s precious mineral export office, and the country’s only seaport petroleum terminal – LPRC. In March 2014, the was appointed Acting Commissioner of Customs in the erstwhile Ministry of Finance of Liberia. In July 2014, he was again appointed Acting Commissioner of Customs at the newly established Liberia Revenue Authority; and in April 2015, he was appointed Commissioner of Customs at the Liberia Revenue Authority.
Mr. Saamoi’s career focus has largely been in the area trade facilitation and supply chain security. Since his appointment as Customs Commissioner, he has accomplished a number of reforms in Liberia Customs, inter-alia, remarkable improvements in the areas of customs operational risk management and post clearance audit, the introduction of a compliant trader program (CTP), the introduction of paperless customs, and the development of the Customs Security Program (CSP) through which Liberia Customs has been enrolled into several security programs under the auspices of the World Customs Organization (WCO).
Commissioner Saamoi is an alumnus of the Institute for French Studies in Liberia, and he holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics (honors) from the University of Liberia. He is a member of the first graduating class of the post crisis World Bank-funded MBA program in Public Financial Management at the University of Liberia. He also holds a Master of Arts degree in Development Economics from Erasmus University in the Netherlands and a Master of International Customs Law & Administration from the University Canberra, Australia.
Darlingston Y. Talery
Commissioner
Department of Domestic Tax
Mr. Darlingston Y. Talery currently serves as the Commissioner for Domestic Tax at the Liberia Revenue Authority; a position he has served for the past six years. Darlingston also serves as the Head of Liberia’s Competent Authority for the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.
Mr. Talery also represents Liberia on other international tax issues with particular emphasis on the OECD Inclusive Framework. He has over eleven years of progress tax experience in tax administration with emphasis on natural resource taxation, transfer pricing, tax administration reform and modernization as well as risk identification and mitigation in the large and medium tax segments.
Darlingston has presided over the reform and modernization of the Domestic Tax Department of the Liberia Revenue Authority that has seen the introduction and implementation of E-filing, E-payment, as well as the use of mobile money for tax payment. An automatic risk engine has also been developed for audit case selection as well as to serve as a risk filter from which other tax compliance management issues can be addressed.
Over the years, Darlingston has co-written the Liberia Income Tax Transfer Pricing Regulations, the Transfer Pricing Practice Notes, the Advance Pricing Agreement Guidelines, the Working Manual for Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes as well as other regulations, practice notes and guidelines for tax purposes in Liberia.
Darlingston has an Advance Diploma in International Taxation from the Chartered Institute of Taxation, (CIOT) UK and is an International Tax Affiliate of CIOT. He is trained in the use of the International Monetary Fund’s Tax Administration Diagnostic and Assessment Tool (TADAT) methodology. He also holds a Master of Law, LLM in Natural Resource Taxation and Finance from the University of Dundee, UK, an MBA in Finance, and Bachelor of Science, BSc. in Economics both from the University of Liberia.