By Bill W. Cooper
The United States Government recently released Country Reports on Human Rights practices in Liberia has highlighted the failure of the Weah-led Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) government to prosecute corrupt government officials.
The 2023 in-depth report, which was published late Monday night, further highlighted the rampant corruption that plagued the country during Weah’s tenure and the lack of accountability for those responsible.
According to the report, Liberia continues to struggle with widespread corruption, which has had a detrimental impact on the country’s development and the well-being of its citizens as was visibly seen during the CDC administration.
The report however followed by the sanctioning of seven government officials from the Weah administration by the US department of state over their involvement in rampant corruption across the country.
Those sanctioned by the US government during the Weah regime included former Minister of State now Margibi County Senator, Nathaniel McGill, former National Port Authority (NPA) Managing Director now Rivercess County Senator, Bill Tweahway and former Solicitor General, Saymah Cyrenus Cephas.
Others are former Monrovia City Mayor, Jefferson Koijee, Grand Kru County Senator, Albert Chie, Margibi County Senator, Emmanuel Nuquay and former Finance and Development Planning Minister, Samuel Tweah.
They were sanctions under the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world.
These officials, according to the US government, were being sanctioned due to their involvement in corruption in government coupled with the abuse of public offices while Koijee was alone being sanctioned for both corruption and human rights violation in Liberia.
But since their sanction by the US government, there have been no action taken by these individuals themselves to ask for justice despite calls from various Civil Society Organization (CSO) including prominent Liberians and other international partners among others.
Though the likes of McGill, Tweahway and Cephas later resigned due to public pressure, the former President showed no interest to investigate his officials or request them to face justice, thus paving the way for McGill and Tweah to contest on his CDC party ticket during the country’s 2023 general elections which they emerged victorious.
But the US 2023 human rights report also noted that despite promises by former President Weah during his inauguration in 2018, to tackle corruption, his administration failed to take decisive action against corrupt officials, allowing them to act and leave with impunity.
According to the report, the Liberian law provided criminal penalties for corruption by officials, but the government generally did not implement the law effectively owing to the fact there were numerous reports of government corruption.
Citing some instances, the report notes, “On September 5, it was reported that the government issued a batch of diplomatic passports to British, Kenyan, Turkish, and Croatian nationals in August diminishing the prestige of the country’s passport.
“Sources familiar with these issuances disclosed to the newspaper certain officials and lawmakers of the ruling CDC party collaborated with senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other government ministries and agencies, to facilitate the issuance of diplomatic passports to foreign individuals in exchange for payments ranging from US$200,000 to US$350,000 per passport.
Also, the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) was established by law in 2008 with a mandate to investigate and prosecute acts of corruption, as well as to educate the public regarding the ills of corruption,” it adds.
The report further, “In July 2022, an amended law gave a new anti-corruption commission more powers and established an open and competitive process for selecting commissioners. The former chairperson of the LACC, Edwin Kla Martin, challenged the legislature’s constitutional power to make and alter laws without limitation.”
“But in January, the Supreme Court ruled against Martin and in September, the senate confirmed seven individuals nominated by President Weah to serve as commissioners and of these point to how corruption was being pretreated by officials but walk away with impunity” the report added.
