Monrovia – According to an Executive Mansion release few minutes ago, the President, Mr. George Weah, has given the General Auditing Commission (GAC) two weeks to report its findings into ‘further understanding’ of how the exercise of the US$25 million earmarked for the mopping of exercise of excess Liberian dollars in the economy was done by the Technical Economic Management Team (TEMT). TEMT is headed by Finance and Development Planning Minister Samuel Tweah.
This mandate from the President through the Ministry of Justice to GAC, grows out of the Presidential Investigative Team’s report, which calls for a ‘forensic investigation’ of the entire mop-up exercise carried out by the Central Bank of Liberia, and the report done by Kroll – an institution of international repute which was commissioned by the U.S. Government.
“The Ministry of Justice, by directive of President George Manneh Weah, has requested the General Auditing Commission to conduct an investigative audit into how the U.S.$25 million earmarked for the mopping exercise was expended,” the Executive Mansion release states.
The report by Kroll, the firm hired by USAID concluded that while its analysis of delivery documentation provided by the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) confirmed that new banknotes totaling L$15.506 billion were received into the CBL’s reserve vaults and that Kroll found no information to support allegations that a container of banknotes went missing, there were a number of discrepancies.
The report also raises concerns regarding the overall accuracy and completeness of the CBL’s internal records and identifies systemic and procedural weaknesses at the CBL, and identifies shortcomings in Liberia’s fiscal and monetary management processes that are longstanding and continue to the present day.
A second report by the special task force set up by President Weah also raised some issues with the CBL’s handling of the saga.
The Presidential Investigation Team, in its report, also penned that officials of the bank acted criminally by conspiring to doctor and fix reports, which were contrary to the actual amounts printed and received by the CBL. More details to follow…
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