Monrovia – Judge Yarmie Gbeisay is set to return as presiding Judge of Criminal Court C at the Temple of Justice this February 2020 Term, FrontPageAfrica has reliably learned.
The February term will open on the second Monday of next month. And this will be Judge Gbeisay’s second time serving as Presiding Judge of the circuit court responsible to try major case of financial crimes.
The last time he served was during the November 2016 Term [of court] when he presided over the famous Sable Mining bribery case involving former and current government officials including former House Speaker Alex Tyler.
The nine former and current government officials have gone on trial for allegedly receiving bribe in the amount of over US$900,000 from the Sable Mining Company to change the Public Procurement law in favor of the company, which was allegedly opting to mine the Wologisi Mountain in Lofa County.
Judge Gbeisay could not try the case to reach its logical conclusion when the prosecution lawyers objected his ruling to temporary accept its evidence obtained from South Africa.
He ruled that he could temporarily accept the evidence until the prosecution can produce its South African witness to testify to evidence as the law requires that one who produced evidence during trial must be present in court to testify to it.
Former Montserrado County Attorney Cllr. Daku Mulbah, on behalf of prosecution, objected to the ruling. He argued that the judge ruling to temporarily accept his evidence was an error on his part but Judge Gbeisay maintained that he had done no wrong and acted in the confine of the law.
Cllr. Mulbah appealed to the Supreme Court against the Judge ruling and after hearing the high court ruled that the Judge was in error to temporarily accept the prosecution evidence by the high court assertion that the judge ruling was a strange practice.
Following the high court ruling, Judge Gbeisay was later reassigned by Chief Justice Francis Korkpor at the 13th Judicial Circuit as part of the rotation process of judges.
However, all nine Defendants were tried been by different judges and acquitted after it was established that the state did not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt that the Defendants accepted bribe to change the law in question.
Judge Gbeisay will take charge of the Criminal Court “C” from female Judge Nancy Sammy, who has spent one term at the Criminal Court “C” and will be moving out to Bomi County.
Judge Sammy has stressed that she will not tolerate any interference in the discharge of her duty.
Judge Gbeisay is coming to the court at the time when high profile economic sabotage cases are pending before the court including a case involving former Central Bank of Liberia officials indicted in the alleged missing L$16 billion case.
The second case involved former Defense Minister Brownie Samukai, his former Deputy Joseph Johnson and Comptroller Nyumah Dorkor, who are also accused and indicted of misapplying US$1.2M deducted from salaries to be used as assistance for families of deceased soldiers.