| Summary of the Case |
Mr. Sirleaf, who is a former Deputy Executive Governor for Operations at the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), was indicted along with other former officials, including Mr. Milton A. Weeks, Executive Governor, Richard Walker, Director for Operations, Dorbor Hagba, Director for Finance Department and Mr. Joseph Dennis, Deputy Director for Internal Audit. On March 1, 2019, while acting as head of the CBL, because Executive Governor Weeks had resigned, Sirleaf, along with Hagba was arrested by officers at the Liberian National Police (LNP) at the CBL Headquarters on Ashmun Street. Their arrest was followed by the arrests of Messrs. Weeks, Walker and Dennis.
The initial charges placed on them were economic sabotage, theft of property, criminal conspiracy and criminal solicitation. But when the present Solicitor General was appointed by President George Weah and he became involved with the case, he added money laundering to the previous charges, according to him, “after I had reviewed the file and analyzed the issues.”
In a later indictment of money laundering, Cllr. Cephus and others had argued that in April 2016 and up to and including August 2016, “The five defendants knowingly, deliberately and intentionally collude and conspired with the wicked intent to launder money and sabotage the Liberian economy by unauthorizingly printing excess Liberian Dollar banknotes amounting to L$2,645,000,000 and also unauthorizingly paid and caused to be paid and did pay the amount of U$835,367.72 to co-defendant Crane Currency of Sweden for the amount printed.”
According to the indictment, also from the investigation conducted independently by the Presidential Investigation Team (PIT) and Kroll Associates from the US, it was established that on May 17, 2016, Co-defendant Sirleaf while serving as Acting Executive Governor of CBL made a request thru former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the Legislature to print L$5B to replace the legacy notes known as mutilated notes.
The state prosecutors further stated that both the House of Representatives and Senate through a joint resolution granted approval to the CBL and a contract was executed with co-defendant Crane Currency for the amount of US$5,210,000 for L$5B to be printed.
Though the state prosecutors claimed that the approval for the printing of the L$5,000,000,000 new Liberian bank notes was granted by the Legislature on May 17, 2016 but Mr. Sirleaf had earlier executed and entered into a contract with Crane Currency on May 6, 2016, 11 days before the Legislature gave him the approval to go ahead.
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