The Acting chairman of the People’s Liberation Party (PLP), Tapple E. Doe, has confirmed the untimely death of its political leader, Dr. Daniel E. Cassell.
Mr. Doe confirming the news said Dr. Cassell died of acardiac arrest or ‘heart attack’, early Christmas morning at his Philadelphia, residence, where he had stayed battling legal charges leveled against him.
In September 2022, the PLP political leader, Dr. Cassell, claimed innocence in insurance fraud charges levied against him by the State of New Jersey.
Cassell, after becoming a household name politically in Liberia due to humanitarian gesture, had been indicted by the Office of the Attorney General of New Jersey with first-degree money laundering, second-degree theft by deception, and multiple counts of conspiracy, insurance fraud, among others.
The Acting New Jersey Attorney General, Matthew J. Platkin and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor (OIFP), also accused Cassell and his wife, Bindu Cassell, of using their mental health clinics to hide unreported income, and failed to report “more than US$11 million in additional New Jersey-earned income on NJ non-resident income tax returns” from 2016-2018.
However, for Cassell’s party, they believe that their political leader was being wrongfully accused, and would have been exonerated from all criminal charges levied against him by New Jersey.
“The PLP would like to state emphatically that the accusations levied against its Vision/Standard Bearer remain ‘doctored allegations’ that can only be proven or denied through the presentation of hard facts or substantive evidence during court hearing or procedures and not by hearsay.
“Indictment is not a guilty verdict but a process of preceding to trial and as such, our Standard Bearer remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of competent jurisdiction in the United States,” the party’s National Chairman earlier said in a statement.
According to Doe, the party remained hopeful that Cassell would have returned to Liberia in time for the 2023 Presidential and Legislative Elections to continue his “crusade to liberate Liberia and its citizens from bad governance, segregation, deprivation, corruption, and other vices and societal ills that have kept them backward for several decades.”
Doe had wondered why his political leader’s case, which is being conducted outside of Liberia, had gained so much national attention and was being used as a conduit to get at the party and its leader “who has never stolen our country’s wealth and resources, neither has he been involved in our past atrocious civil war or committed any crime in Liberia.”
“We remain focused, determined and dedicated to building cells by consistently engaging our fellow citizens throughout the length and breadth of our country, and intervening to resolve the mountainous aged-old problems that they are faced with.”
“To this end, the PLP remains the only beacon of hope to liberate Liberia and its citizens and therefore, all patriotic and well-meaning Liberians should continue to put the interest of our country first by denouncing propaganda intended to injure the reputation of others, who have been in the vanguard of finding solutions to the barrage of problems the nation and citizens are currently encountering, as they continue to worsen day by day.”
Cassell’s alleged crime, according to Platkin, took place between January 2015 and October 2021, and that the New Jersey Office of the Insurance Fraud Protector began investigating him and his company, Kwenyan Professional Health Services, LLC and Kwenyan and Associates, which operated clinics across New Jersey in 2019.
The companies operated until October 2021. Officials said Cassell, his wife, and some employees used the Kwenyan name to hide income on tax returns using the clinics to conceal the couple’s income in a US$1 million tax evasion scheme and defraud Medicaid with a phony billing scheme. They also defrauded Progressive Insurance Company, officials said.
Two of Cassell’s employees submitted thousands of false claims to Medicaid for mental health services that were never performed, or were billed incorrectly, New Jersey officials noted.
They are charged, along with Cassell, with second-degree conspiracy to commit health care claims fraud, second-degree health care claims fraud, third-degree conspiracy to commit Medicaid Fraud, and third-degree Medicaid Fraud.
Meanwhile, Doe has claimed that local media coverage of the Cassell case is a smear campaign that had been initiated by failed and greedy politicians who want to see Liberians die in perpetual economic hardship and poverty.
He added, “Amid the current administration plundering our country’s resources on their respective family members who are flagrantly flaunting their wealth in the eyes of the impoverished masses.”
Doe noted that the PLP is not moved or deterred by the growing wave of “political propaganda being intentionally targeted at Cassell” and the party ahead of the 2023 general and presidential elections.
