The dropping of charges against four of the five former officials of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) that include Deputy Governor for Operations, Charles E. Sirleaf, for their individual roles in the alleged missing L$2.6 billion and subsequent plan by state prosecutors to arrest members of the board of directors clearly point to the fact that the government is poised to waste more taxpayers' money if the case were to be pursued in that direction.
The government took the action on Wednesday, May 13 when they petitioned the Criminal Court 'C' at the Temple of Justice about its interest to drop charges that include economic sabotage, criminal conspiracy and criminal facilitation against Sirleaf, Director for Finance, Dorbor M. Hagba, Director for Operation, Richard H. Walker and Deputy Director for Internal Audit, Joseph Dennis, but leaving out former CBL Executive Governor Milton A. Weeks to account for the alleged missing money.
The state prosecutors, in defense of their decision, said those released from answering to the charges were not directly involved with the management of the entity that led to the alleged action by Weeks and probably the board of directors to have without any authorization from the legislature ordered Crane Currency, a currency printing company operating in Sweden, and which is at the centre of the unaccounted L$2.645 billion.
Contrary to the earlier charge that co-defendant Sirleaf, while serving as acting Bank Governor, conspired with other officials of the CBL and the co-defendants, all of who intentionally printed and caused the printing of excess Liberian dollars, said action on the part of the defendants, the writ indicated, has the propensity to cause serious economic instability, undermine the government and cause citizens to rise up against it.
It can be recalled that on Monday, April 1, 2019, the Ministry of Justice said: "To the contrary, Crane Currency and officials of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), both current and past, were charged and indicted on March 4, 2019, for Economic Sabotage, Criminal Conspiracy, and Facilitation, in the printing of excess Liberian Dollar Banknotes.
