WASHINGTON, DC — A Liberian senator has told American democracy advocates that his country faces two threats at once: multinational mining companies working through legal deals, and drug cartels working through bribes. He said either one could hollow out Liberia’s democracy from within if it is left unchecked.

By Rodney D. Sieh

Senator Amara M. Konneh is an independent lawmaker from Gbarpolu County in northwestern Liberia and chairs the Senate’s Public Accounts and Audit Committee. He spoke at a private roundtable hosted this month by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S.-funded

organization that supports democratic institutions abroad. His remarks are drawn from talking points prepared for the session and reviewed by FrontPageAfrica.

“Liberia is not yet a captured state,” Konneh said, “but we are at the most dangerous point since the war and Ebola.”

The West African nation of about 5.5 million people was founded in 1847 with the backing of freed American slaves. It is still recovering from a civil war that ended in 2003 and from the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic that killed nearly 5,000 Liberians.

‘Legal, so it’s harder’

Konneh said mining makes up 12 percent of Liberia’s gross domestic product and 65 percent of its export earnings. Yet less than 3 percent of that wealth reaches communities directly.

The problem, he argued, starts with the way concessions are negotiated. Liberian law gives the executive branch wide discretion over Mineral Development Agreements. These 25-year contracts are ratified by the legislature and are very hard to amend later. “Companies negotiate with three or four people in Monrovia, not with the country,” he said.

He pointed out that several major operators are renegotiating rail, port and royalty terms at the same time: steelmaker ArcelorMittal, gold miner Bea Mountain, Hummingbird and Bao Chico. On paper Liberia keeps 48 percent of mining value, he said, but stabilization clauses, tax holidays and transfer pricing push the real share far lower.

He also described a system of off-budget signature bonuses and “social contributions,” often paid around elections. He said legislators from mining districts are offered jobs, scholarships and “facilitation fees” of $5,000 to $20,000 to vote for ratification. “This is legalized state capture,” he said. He did not tie any particular company to these payments.

He also warned that private security forces at some concessions are larger and better equipped than the county police. And he said community activists who protested environmental damage have been charged with “economic sabotage.” His examples included Kinjor in Grand Cape Mount County, the community most affected by Bea Mountain’s gold concession, as well as communities in Grand Bassa and Nimba.

‘Illegal, so it’s faster’

The drug trade follows “the same playbook, different commodity,” Konneh said. Traffickers don’t need to buy the whole state, only key people: “an airport baggage handler, an evidence clerk, a police crime services officer, and a port scanner operator.”

He cited two seizures this year. In June, 237 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated $19.2 million were seized at Roberts International Airport, the country’s main airport. In July, 3.9 metric tons worth about $317 million were seized in Duazon, outside the capital, Monrovia. He said the July haul had links to Spain, Colombia, Serbia, Croatia and Ukraine, and that its value was four times Liberia’s national health budget.

He also pointed to cases inside the country’s own anti-drug agency. On September 29, a court in Margibi County convicted Joe Logan and Lovette Flowers, two agents of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA), of colluding with traffickers, and sentenced each to the maximum 20 years. They had resold cocaine seized at the airport. Konneh said a police Commissioner for Crime Services was also dismissed after admitting to taking a $10,000 bribe in the same network.

Konneh also raised the most politically sensitive case. Former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor was arrested at the airport and charged on August 19 with conspiracy, facilitation and money laundering. She denies the charges. Konneh criticized the government for destroying the 3.9 tons of cocaine before trial. He predicted the case could collapse over constitutional warrant defects or chain-of-custody problems. If it does, he said, “the public will conclude it’s politics, not justice.”

He placed Liberia within a wider regional crisis. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 126.4 metric tons of cocaine were seized in or through West Africa between 2019 and 2024, including 30.8 tons in the Gulf of Guinea corridor along Liberia’s coast. The region has become “a destination market, not just a transit zone,” he said. He also described kush, a cheap synthetic drug blend that first spread in Sierra Leone and now reaches Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia and Senegal, mostly among unemployed young people.

Why Washington should care

Konneh framed the issue as a test of American credibility. He said Liberia voted with the United States 89 percent of the time at the United Nations last year and hosts the largest U.S. diplomatic presence in West Africa.

“If Liberians conclude that America only cares when there’s a big drug bust but stays silent when a $2 billion mining deal is signed behind closed doors, we lose credibility for democracy,” he said. “China and Russia don’t ask about beneficial ownership. Cartels don’t ask about human rights.”

He noted that Sweden closed its embassy in Monrovia last month. He also urged the European Union to keep its delegation in Liberia fully staffed rather than move its functions to Abidjan in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.

The asks

At home, Konneh said, the Senate is working on several measures. On mining, it wants to require that all mining agreements, amendments, beneficial owners and payments be published before ratification. It also proposes independent valuation of iron ore transfer pricing, modeled on Botswana’s approach to diamonds, and sending 20 percent of royalties directly to district development funds.

On drugs, the proposals would require that seized evidence be kept until final judgment. Officers at the airport, the Freeport of Monrovia and the security agencies would face polygraphs, lifestyle audits and drug tests. An unexplained-wealth law would allow assets to be seized without a criminal conviction.

From Washington, he asked for help that is “practical, not preachy”:

• Funding to monitor Liberia’s drug court and commercial court

• Forensic audits of the ArcelorMittal rail and port concession and of Bea Mountain’s royalties

• Resumed mentoring of vetted Liberian drug units by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, with oversight

• Equipment for scanners and sniffer dogs, including maintenance

• Help from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in tracing money in three or four specific cases

• A $10 million pilot program to track large cash donations ahead of the 2029 elections

He also urged that Global Magnitsky sanctions, the U.S. tool for penalizing corrupt officials and human rights abusers, be used “surgically.” Their targets should include enablers in mining licensing who move money into U.S. real estate, he said, and Washington should state publicly why it acts.

“Help us establish transparent regulations before finalizing agreements,” Konneh said, “and support impartial enforcement of laws after confiscation — whether the suspect is an airport baggage handler, a police crimes services director, a former Vice President, or a multinational corporation.”

MONROVIA – For four months, Liberians have treated this year’s two great cocaine seizures as one story. The airport bust came first, the record haul followed six weeks later, and officials spoke of a single network that had burrowed into the state for more than six years.

By Rodney D. Sieh

Investigators now say that picture is wrong.

“We haven’t identified yet any connection between 19M and 317M,” investigators told FrontPageAfrica this week. “Leroy Harris doesn’t have connections to [the] 317M [case].”

If that holds, Liberia is not fighting one cartel. It is fighting two, with different suppliers, different routes, different customers and different methods. It also helps explain one of the stranger features of the State’s case: the disappearance of George Wah “Leroy” Harris, the Paynesville bar owner the government publicly charged in the US$317 million probe in August, from the indictment that followed.

It does not explain everything. A close reading of both indictments shows threads that still run between the two cases, and questions the Ministry of Justice has yet to answer.

Case one: the airport pipeline

The first case broke on June 8 at Roberts International Airport (RIA). Screeners flagged six cargo boxes declared as Maggi cubes and lappas. Inside were 198 compressed plates of cocaine, 237.6 kilograms in all, valued at about US$19.2 million.

The shipment was going out, not coming in. According to the indictment, a logistics manager arranged for the boxes to fly Brussels Airlines to London Heathrow, consigned to Usman Ali at an address in Birmingham, England. Prosecutors say a similar four-box consignment, also declared as Maggi cubes and lappas, left on May 20 for US$1,400 in fees.

This is the network investigators describe as running Sierra Leone–Liberia–United Kingdom/Netherlands. FPA sources now tie it to Jos Leijdekkers, the Dutch fugitive whom authorities believe has been sheltering in Sierra Leone. A senior security official had earlier linked Leijdekkers to Liberia’s drug trade in general terms; investigators now place him with the airport pipeline specifically. Leijdekkers has not been charged in Liberia.

A Montserrado County grand jury indicted 10 defendants in the August Term of Criminal Court “C”: Harris; Paul Jamaal King; Philip Yeoh Jr.; Mohammed O. Gbowrah; former LDEA airport deputy commander Moses Jallah; Michael U.S. Brown, alias Rahim Bah; Polo Bah; Oscar J. Brown; Usman Ali; and an unidentified “private bar” entity or person.

Harris sits at the centre of the bribery allegations. Prosecutors say that after the seizure he offered LDEA agents US$100,000 to return the boxes, handed US$5,000 to Jallah at Private Bar, offered a warehouse in Sayon Town for storage, and told Jallah he owned a quarter of the drugs. Harris is in Monrovia Central Prison and is presumed innocent.

Case two: the sea route

The second case is a different animal. On July 21, a joint security team raided a compound on Cement Road in the VOA Community, off the RIA Highway. They found 3,971 plates of cocaine in 157 bags, which the State values at US$317.68 million.

Two foreigners were arrested on the spot: Johann David Garces Grajales, who holds Spanish and Colombian passports, and Srdan Seles, a Serbian. A third man, known only as Tom, allegedly slipped away before the raid.

This cocaine came in by sea. Prosecutors say it was landed from the Atlantic in May, carried by canoe up the Po River at Royesville through ground the group had secured in Bomi County, then trucked to the VOA house. The cover was a fishing business on the riverbank and a front airline, Afri-Connect Airlines, whose aircraft was bought in August 2025 and flew into Spriggs Payne.

Investigators describe this pipeline as Colombia–Brazil–Liberia–Ghana–Eastern Europe (Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine)–Dubai. The 55-page indictment, issued with an October 7 writ, names Nikola Ivancic as the cartel’s paymaster and puts the network’s political recruitment in a Dubai meeting.

Its reach is far wider than case one. The defendants include former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, former NSA deputy director Gerald Folley Smith, former airport operations chief Mark Kuiah, and a string of security officers. The charges run to 11 counts, including money laundering and weapons offences.

Where the two cases part

The differences are not cosmetic. They go to how each network made money.

* Direction. Case one was an export: cocaine already in Liberia leaving by air for Britain. Case two was an import and storage operation: a mother shipment landed by sea and held near the airport road.

* Scale. The VOA haul is nearly 17 times heavier and about 16 times more valuable than the airport seizure.

* Method. The airport network used ordinary commercial airfreight, false cargo declarations and small cash payments to handlers. The sea network bought land, boats, a plane and, prosecutors say, protection at the highest levels.

* People. Case one’s defendants are mostly Liberian logistics workers, airport hands and a UK consignee. Case two is run by foreign operators with Latin American and Balkan links, allegedly shielded by senior Liberian officials.

* Markets. One route ends in Britain and the Netherlands; the other fans out to Eastern Europe and the Gulf.

On that reading, the State’s treatment of Harris makes some sense. His alleged conduct — the US$100,000 offer, the US$5,000 payment, the claim to a quarter share — concerns the airport boxes. Prosecutors may simply have charged him where their evidence lies.

The Harris gap

But the record does not move in a straight line.

In early August, the Ministry of Information announced that Harris had been charged in the US$317 million probe. Security forces sealed Private Bar and searched it three times; management says nothing illegal was found. Harris was arraigned at the Monrovia City Court. Police said at the time that he had called security officials in the hours after the seizure to try to free the shipment.

On August 27, Criminal Court “C” issued its writ in the airport case, naming Harris. On October 7, the US$317 million indictment arrived. Harris is not in its caption, its counts or its narrative.

No one has told the public whether the August charge was withdrawn, merged into the airport case, or left pending.

That matters for a man in pre-trial detention: he is entitled to know which case is holding him.

The threads that remain

Investigators may be right that the two networks are distinct. Yet the 317M indictment itself keeps brushing against the smaller case.

Private Bar appears in both. The new indictment places the cartel’s introductory meeting for its front airline at Private Bar in Paynesville — Harris’s venue — while charging no one over it. Witnesses separately told FPA that Usman Ali, the airport case’s UK consignee, attended a birthday party for Harris and Michael Browne at the same bar on May 17.

The “19” in the voice notes. Among the State’s evidence against Howard-Taylor are WhatsApp exchanges with co-defendant Sheik Bashiru Kante. In them, prosecutors attribute to Kante references to “the 19 kilos” and “19 million.” If those words point to the airport seizure, the larger case’s own evidence invokes the smaller one.

The airport in the middle. Both cases run through RIA. The June boxes were caught there. The sea cartel allegedly paid Kuiah, then RIA’s operations chief, US$50,000 to smooth its path. Kuiah is named in the big indictment, though no count lists him, and he was dismissed after the airport seizure.

Leijdekkers and Sierra Leone. If the Dutch fugitive stands behind the airport pipeline, has Liberia asked Freetown and The Hague for help? The Inspector General promised in July to pursue suspects abroad through extradition and mutual legal assistance. The public has seen no request.

The 2022 shadow

Liberia has been here before. In 2022, a jury acquitted all four defendants in the US$100 million Freeport case, then the country’s largest, and all four left the country within a day.

Two indictments now stand where one case once seemed to. Whether they are two cartels or two halves of one is a question for evidence, not press briefings. But a prosecution that cannot say clearly who belongs in which case will hand defence lawyers their opening — and risk repeating 2022.

All defendants named in this report are presumed innocent unless proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction.

MONROVIA – For months, Mark Egon Kuiah’s name has hovered over Liberia’s cocaine scandal without ever quite landing.

By Rodney D Sieh

He ran operations at Roberts International Airport, the country’s main gateway, where 198 plates of cocaine were found in June hidden in cargo declared as Maggi cubes and lappas. That seizure, valued at more than US$19 million, opened the first of this year’s drug cases. Weeks later, President Joseph Boakai dismissed Kuiah “with immediate effect” in a July 30 purge of security officials.

Now, the State has named him a defendant in its 55-page indictment in the far larger US$317 million case. But a FrontPageAfrica review of the document shows an unusual gap. Each of the 11 counts opens by listing the defendants it accuses. Kuiah’s name is in none of those lists, even though eight counts describe what he allegedly did.

What the indictment says he did

The State’s account of Kuiah is short and repeated almost word for word across eight counts. Caycee Nelson, the man prosecutors say managed the cartel’s front airline, “Afri-Connect Airlines,” recruited him. Kuiah allegedly asked for US$250,000 to help the operation through the airport and received US$50,000 up front. He was given two phones “for communication.”

He is also said to have recruited two aviation colleagues: F. Augustine Claudius Tamba, Deputy Director General of the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority, and Abner Wanah Yonly, Sr., manager of James Spriggs Payne Airfield. The indictment adds, in one paragraph, that the two “did not provide any support.” Neither is charged.

The State says Kuiah “knew and had reasons to know” the cartel planned to move cocaine through Liberia to Europe, and “accepted to provide the required assistance.”

What it does not say

The indictment never describes a single thing Kuiah did at the airport for the cartel. The cartel’s aircraft, bought in August 2025, landed at Spriggs Payne, not at Roberts International. The indictment does not allege it ever carried drugs. The cocaine seized at Cement Road, by the State’s own account, came in by sea and canoe up the Po River.

The sums are muddled too. One paragraph says Nelson handed Kuiah the US$50,000. The money-laundering count says it was paid by Jammel V. Jallah, through Christian L. Nyantee.

Even his job shifts. The caption calls him a former Deputy Director of Operations at the Civil Aviation Authority. Other paragraphs place him at Roberts International Airport. One calls him “Deputy Manager for Operations.” His name is spelled both Quiah and Kuiah. Government statements at the time of his dismissal described him as Deputy Director for Operations at RIA.

Then there is the charging language itself. Each count opens with a list of the defendants the grand jury finds probable cause against. Nikola Ivancic, Jewel Howard Taylor, Gerald Folley Smith, and others appear there, count after count. Kuiah’s name does not appear in any of those lists.

A defendant the counts leave out

Kuiah is a defendant. The caption names him, General Allegation 18 calls him “The Defendant Mark Quiah,” and the October 7 writ from Criminal Court “C” orders his arrest. The indictment’s closing clause applies to all the “hereinabove named defendants.”

But each count is meant to tell a defendant exactly what he is accused of. Here, eight counts describe Kuiah’s conduct while leaving him off the list of those the grand jury finds committed the offence. Defense lawyers can be expected to argue that he was indicted without being clearly charged in any count, and to seek to quash on that ground. Prosecutors are likely to answer that the caption, the general allegations and the closing clause are enough to put him on notice.

Whether the omission is a drafting slip, like the other errors FrontPageAfrica has documented in the indictment, or something more deliberate is an open question. It comes after weeks of talk that Kuiah has been helping investigators. In August, FrontPageAfrica reported that he had been giving investigators a considerable amount of information since his dismissal, and that he had not been arrested.

The Ministry of Justice has not said publicly whether Kuiah is a cooperating witness. He is not among the witnesses listed in the indictment, which names only three police officers and “documentary evidence.” FrontPageAfrica could not confirm whether he has been taken into custody since the writ was issued.

Kuiah’s July 29 appearance on an earlier police charge sheet followed a similar pattern. That document described a “Mark Quiah” as a friend brought in to help with aircraft operations in 2024. It did not list him among its 12 defendants.

The letter not in the file

One episode is absent from the indictment altogether. On July 13, while still at the airport, Kuiah signed a letter to the Liberia Maritime Authority as “registered agent” for Madris Group of Companies Incorporated. It asked that a cargo ship, the Comoros-flagged IB Atlantic IV, be allowed into the Freeport of Monrovia because it was “in distress at sea due to loss of engine performance.”

The Maritime Authority declined. The ship was later pursued by Liberian forces off Rivercess, amid unconfirmed reports that a smaller boat had approached it at sea. No link between the letter and any crime has been established, and Kuiah has not been charged over it.

The indictment makes no mention of the letter, the ship or Madris Group.

Kuiah has not commented publicly. He is presumed innocent, as are all those named in the indictment.

The bar owner who disappeared from the case

If Kuiah is a defendant, the counts leave out George Wah Harris, a man the government charged who is missing altogether.

Harris, also known as Leroy Harris, owns Private Bar Entertainment Center in Paynesville. In early August, the government announced at a Ministry of Information briefing that he had been charged in the US$317 million cocaine probe. The listed offences were possession, importation, trafficking, economic sabotage, money laundering, conspiracy, facilitation and solicitation.

Security forces searched his bar three times. Management said they found nothing illegal on any occasion. Harris was arraigned at the Monrovia City Court and sent to Monrovia Central Prison. On August 13, the Bureau of Corrections said he was still there and had been granted no judicial relief.

Yet the October 7 indictment in the US$317 million case does not mention Harris anywhere. Not in the caption, not in the counts, not in the narrative.

Instead, Harris turned up in the other case. On August 27, Criminal Court “C” issued a writ in the June airport seizure, the 198 plates found at Roberts International Airport. That indictment accuses Harris of offering US$100,000 to two Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency officers at the airport to recover the seized cocaine. It says he handed US$5,000 to one of them, Moses Jallah, at his bar.

The shift raises a question the government has not answered. Did investigators drop their claim that Harris was tied to the US$317 million haul, or is a separate charge still to come?

Readers should not confuse two other names in the new indictment. “Harris Ward” is a community in Royesville Township where prosecutors say the cocaine was stored, not a person. And the bar the indictment does mention is Private Bar in Paynesville, where the cartel allegedly held an introductory meeting for its airline. A man named there as the airline’s “Ground Handler,” Franklin Harberg (also spelled Herbert and Harbert), is not charged either.

One airport, two gaps

The two names point to the same weakness. Roberts International Airport sits at the center of Liberia’s drug crisis this year. It was the site of the June seizure, and it is the airport the cartel allegedly paid an insider to smooth its path through.

Yet in the case that names the airport’s own operations chief as a defendant, the counts themselves leave him out. And in that same case, a man the government publicly charged in August does not appear at all.

Monrovia-Five of the 19 defendants indicted alongside former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor in a drug trafficking and money laundering case have been arrested, brought before Criminal Court “C” at the Temple of Justice and subsequently taken to the Monrovia Central Prison, where they are being held pending trial.

By Willie N. Tokpah

Among those arrested are Gerald Foley Smith, former Deputy Director for Administration of the National Security Agency, NSA, Jammel V. Jallah, Christian L. Nyantee, Cayce L. Nelson, Albenigo Janior and Sekou, according to information surrounding the court proceedings.

Mark Quiah, former Deputy Director for Operations of the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority was initially arrested late Wednesday night, October 7, and taken to the Monrovia Central Prison, making the number of arrest six, since the indictment.

The development followed a writ of arrest issued by Criminal Court “C” on October 7, 2026, ordering the Montserrado County Sheriff, Major Austine Seinavula, or his deputy, to arrest the defendants named in the indictment and bring them before the court to answer to the allegations.

The defendants have not been arraigned.
They were arrested and brought before the court pursuant to the writ and have since been taken to the Monrovia Central Prison pending further judicial proceedings.

11 Serious Criminal Charges

The indictment contains a range of allegations, including unlicensed possession of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed importation of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed exportation of controlled drugs or substances; unlicensed sale, trading, administration, dispensation, delivery, distribution, dispatch in transit and transportation of controlled drugs or substances; illicit trafficking; criminal conspiracy; criminal facilitation; criminal solicitation; money laundering; possession and sale of physical objects for lethal use; and possession of physical objects for lethal use.

The allegations represent some of the most serious criminal charges contained in the indictment, which has drawn former government officials and other individuals into the ongoing investigation and prosecution.

Court Orders Arrests

The writ of arrest, signed by J. Amos F. Gbowah, Clerk of Criminal Court “C,” commands the Montserrado County Sheriff to arrest the defendants and “forthwith” bring them before the court to answer to the charges contained in the indictment.

MONROVIA – When officers raided a compound on Cement Road in the VOA Community on July 21, they found 3,971 “plates” of the drug, packed in 157 bags and valued at about US$317 million.

By Rodney D. Sieh

Two foreign men were arrested on the spot. Eleven weeks later, the State has gone much further. A 55-page indictment now names 20 people, among them senior security officers, an aviation official and the woman who was once a heartbeat from the presidency, former Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor.

But a close reading of the document tells a messier story. Dates shift from page to page. Payments grow or appear out of nowhere. The indictment gets Taylor’s own term of office wrong, and the court that filed it is not the court that ordered the arrests.

Taylor’s lawyer, Cllr. Gbawou Kowou, says the case against his client rests on the word of one man, co-defendant Sheik Bashiru Kante.

“The entire indictment of Jewel is nothing more [than] the same ‘Sheikh say,'” Kowou told FrontPageAfrica, playing on the word “hearsay.” The government’s evidence, he said, “as referenced and narrated in Numbers 12, 29 through 31 of the indictment, clearly show[s] the same ‘Sheikh say’ reliance on which the case against Jewel is built.”

He also accused prosecutors of lumping strangers together. The State, he said, “placed everyone in one group, most of whom are not connected or known to each other.”

None of the allegations have been tested in court, and every defendant is presumed innocent.

An office she no longer held

The State’s theory is simple. In 2021, it says, Taylor agreed to use her power as Vice President to protect a cartel moving cocaine through Liberia to Europe. In return, money flowed to her and to her charity, the Jewel Starfish Foundation.

On that theory, she faces seven of the 11 counts: conspiracy, importation, transportation, trafficking, exportation, facilitation and money laundering.

The trouble starts with the calendar. The indictment says she served as Vice President until January 2023. In fact, the Weah–Taylor government left office on January 22, 2024. And nearly everything the cartel is accused of actually doing in Liberia happened after that date: the aircraft bought in August 2025, the beach scouting at Marshall that September, the land at Royesville, the May 2026 convoy and the July seizure.

Nowhere does the indictment say what protection a former Vice President could offer in 2025 or 2026. It does not describe a single phone call, order, or favor she gave the network at any time. “High-level political assurance and cover” is the phrase it uses, again and again, without saying what that cover was.

Even the story of how she was recruited changes. In one paragraph, two cartel men meet her at her Congo Town home in October 2021, and she flies to Dubai to meet their boss that November. In another, the introduction happens “in 2022,” and she is already called the “former” Vice President, though she was then in office. A third paragraph moves the Dubai meeting to November 2022.

The money moves too. A US$27,000 travel payment and a US$75,000 gift to her foundation appear early. A US$45,000 “shopping-gift bag” turns up only in the money-laundering count, 52 pages in. The 2021 payments are called “proceeds of the cocaine,” though no cocaine deal before them is described.

There is also a question of law. The 2021 conduct is charged under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act of 2023. Liberia’s Constitution, in Article 21(a), forbids punishing anyone under a law that did not exist when the act took place. Prosecutors may answer that a conspiracy is a continuing crime. That argument is much harder to make for the other counts.

One export charge even ties her to a cocoa shipment that left the Freeport of Monrovia on October 12, 2021, weeks before the Dubai meeting at which she was supposedly recruited. No cocaine was ever reported found in those containers.

Only the 2021 shipment and Dubai meeting fall inside her term. Everything else the indictment describes came after she left office.

The tapes, and the man in the middle

The newest evidence against Taylor is a set of WhatsApp voice notes she allegedly sent Kante on August 31, 2026. That is six weeks after the cocaine was seized and the first arrests made.

On the recordings, as quoted by prosecutors, she sounds like a politician short of cash. “You know things are really crazy on our end,” she says. “So please ask Nicholas if he could send me some help.” She thanks Kante for US$15,000, worries about a child’s school fees, and talks of party conventions and campaign vehicles across the 15 counties.

What she never mentions is drugs. The talk of “the 19 kilos” and “19 million or whatever that was” is put in Kante’s mouth, not hers. Her most suspicious-sounding line, “So maybe [they are] being hidden somewhere until a better time,” carries two words in brackets that the prosecution added.

The law asks more than whether she took money from Ivancic. For money laundering, the State must show she knew or suspected the money came from crime. The indictment says she knew who sent it. It does not say how she knew where it came from.

Nor does it explain how the recordings were obtained, or from whose phone. One of the files is even labeled an “Image,” though it is described as audio.

This is where Kowou’s “Sheikh say” argument bites. Read paragraphs 12 and 29 to 31, the ones he cites, and Kante is everywhere. He meets the cartel men in a Dubai nightclub. He promises them protection from top officials. He brings them to Taylor’s home, travels in her Dubai delegation, and receives her voice notes.

The indictment lists only three witnesses, all police officers, plus unnamed documents. It names no one outside the defendants who saw Taylor agree to anything. If the 2021 story rests on Kante, a man charged in the same case, his credibility will decide much of it.

Kante arranged or attended every meeting Taylor is accused of. The indictment never says she met, called, or paid anyone who ran the 2025–26 operation, which is the heart of Kowou’s complaint that strangers were lumped together.

A document at odds with itself

The problems are not confined to Taylor. The indictment itself was filed before Criminal Assizes “A” and Judge Roosevelt Z. Willie. The writ ordering the arrests came from a different court, Criminal Court “C” under Judge Ousman F. Feika, which describes the case as its own. The writ also misspells the former Vice President’s first name as “Jowel.”

The grand jury’s sign-off raises its own questions. There are 11 counts but only six “True Bill” endorsements, with no word on which counts they cover. The closing paragraph mentions only one crime, illicit trafficking. And on the copy FrontPageAfrica reviewed, the date beside the foreman’s signature appears to read 2025, a year before the seizure.

Perhaps the most striking gap is the cocaine itself. Drug charges in Liberia are graded by the type and amount of the drug, yet the indictment never gives a weight. It counts “plates” in one place and “bags” in another. It calls the substance lab-confirmed cocaine on one page and “suspected cocaine” on others.

The smaller details wobble too. One defendant is said to have “lived in” the Royesville house until his arrest, though he was arrested at a different address, on Cement Road. Former NSA official Gerald Folley Smith is paid “millions” in one paragraph and “more than US$80,000” in another. One co-defendant’s conduct is dated 2015, six years before the conspiracy began. Three NSA agents are described as knowingly escorting cocaine for cash, yet none of them is charged.

Each pair comes from the same 55-page document. May 30, 2026, was a Saturday.

What happens next

None of this means the cocaine was not real or that no crime took place. Two men were caught with the drugs, and the case against them looks direct. For the rest, prosecutors’ strongest ground is the conspiracy count, which needs only an agreement and a single act by any member.

The other charges against Taylor are harder to square with the text. They accuse her of importing, moving and exporting cocaine, but describe nothing she did beyond meetings in 2021 and money she received. Expect her lawyers to press on the dates, the 2023 law, and the two courts as soon as the case is called.

A Liberian court has ordered the arrest of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor, ex-wife of convicted warlord and former President Charles Taylor, along with former security officials, police officers and several European nationals. The order follows a grand jury indictment on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, one of the highest-profile criminal cases in the West African country’s recent history. Howard-Taylor has denied the allegations.

By Willie N. Tokpah

MONROVIA – A Liberian court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor and more than 20 others in a sweeping drug trafficking and money laundering case that also names former security officials, senior police officers and nationals of Croatia and Ukraine.

Judge Ousman F. Feika of Criminal Court “C” in the capital, Monrovia, issued an arrest warrant directing the county sheriff to take the defendants into custody and bring them before the court. The warrant follows an indictment returned by a grand jury in Montserrado County, which includes Monrovia.

The defendants face charges including illicit drug trafficking; unlicensed importation, exportation, sale and transportation of controlled substances; criminal conspiracy, facilitation and solicitation; money laundering; and offenses involving objects allegedly intended for lethal use.

Former Officials Named

Besides Howard-Taylor, the defendants include Gerald Foley Smith, a former deputy director of Liberia’s National Security Agency, and Mark Quiah, a former deputy director of operations at the Liberia Civil Aviation Authority. Two senior police officers, Deputy Commissioner Anthony T. Blaye and Assistant Commissioner Wadell W. Kwarbo, are also named.

Foreign defendants include Croatian nationals Nikola Ivancic and Mihovil Vrovac and Ukrainian national Taras Zadereiko. Others named include Srdan Seles, Johnn David Garces and Sheik Bashiru Kante. The warrant lists further individuals known only by first names or aliases and says others have yet to be identified.

The warrant does not set out the specific conduct attributed to each defendant, nor does it say whether any alleged offenses took place outside Liberia.

Arrested at the Airport

The case dates to August, when Howard-Taylor was stopped while attempting to leave Liberia at Roberts International Airport and taken to Liberia National Police headquarters, according to the Justice Ministry. The government also charged three foreigners in absentia for their alleged roles in the network: Ivancic, Vrovac and Zadereiko.

Howard-Taylor has denied the central allegation. “I don’t know them,” she told FrontPageAfrica, referring to the three foreign nationals.

A Political Heavyweight

Howard-Taylor, 63, served as vice president from 2018 to 2024 under former President George Weah, the ex-football star. She entered politics after her former husband, ex-President Charles Taylor, left office in 2003. Charles Taylor was later convicted by an international war crimes court for sponsoring atrocities in neighboring Sierra Leone, and is serving a 50-year sentence in Britain.

The case is widely seen as a test of President Joseph Boakai’s pledge that no office is too high for the law to reach.

Wider Crackdown

The indictment comes amid an intensified government push against international drug networks using Liberia as a transit point. In July, Liberia announced what it described as its largest-ever cocaine seizure — almost four tonnes, with an estimated value of about $317 million. Officials have stressed that the seizure and the case involving Howard-Taylor are separate investigations.

West Africa has long served as a transit route for South American cocaine bound for Europe, and authorities said the July seizure was believed to be headed there.

Next Steps

An indictment is a formal accusation, not a finding of guilt, and all defendants are presumed innocent. Once the warrant is served, the defendants are expected to appear before the court, where bail applications and the prosecution’s presentation of evidence will shape the next phase of the case.

Prosecutors will be required to prove each defendant’s individual responsibility through admissible evidence under Liberian law.

A statement attributed to detained former Highway Patrol Chief Wadell Kwarbo says IG Gregory Coleman ordered him to escort the drug van. His family denies he made it, and the IG calls it part of a four-month disinformation campaign.

MONROVIA — A few days ago, Wadell Kwarbo’s father appeared on Spoon FM with an account of what his detained son had allegedly told him before he was taken into custody.

By Rodney D. Sieh

According to the father, a senior officer had called Kwarbo and instructed him to escort a shipment of drugs. At the time, he did not publicly identify the officer.

This week, however, a name emerged.

A statement attributed to Kwarbo, the former chief of the Liberia National Police Highway Patrol Division who remains detained at the Monrovia Central Prison, identified Police Inspector General Gregory O. W. Coleman as the officer who allegedly made the call.

“Police IG Gregory Coleman ordered me to escort the van. He instructed me to escort the drugs with my patrol vehicle (RL-141). And I acted on his order,” Kwarbo was quoted as saying on Spoon FM.

The statement reportedly went further, calling for his telephone records and written statement to be made available.

“Let them get my call log. My call log can be subpoenaed through the Court,” he was quoted as saying. “Let them release my written statement also. Why are they keeping it? They have it.”

But there is now a direct contradiction over whether Kwarbo actually made those statements.

Family: “He Never Made Such A Statement”

On Thursday, Kwarbo’s wife, Bendu Kwarbo, issued a statement on behalf of the family distancing her husband from the allegations against Coleman.

The family said it “categorically dissociates” Kwarbo from reports attributing the allegations to him and said neither the family nor his lawyers knew about or authorized any statement accusing the police chief.

“Mr. Kwarbo himself firmly rejects and denies this allegation in its entirety and maintains that he has made no such statement,” the family said.

The family said Kwarbo’s lawyers had advised him to remain silent and allow the court process to determine the case.

It described the statement circulating in his name as “malicious” and urged media organizations and the public to verify information before publishing or repeating allegations.

The family also maintains that Kwarbo should not have been arrested and that the case against him is based on what it described as false and misleading allegations.

Coleman: “Sustained Disinformation Campaign”

Coleman, meanwhile, has rejected the allegation and characterized it as part of what he says has been a prolonged campaign to undermine his credibility.

“For the past four months, I have been the target of a sustained disinformation campaign intended to damage my character and silence my fight against the culture of impunity, including the ongoing drug investigation,” Coleman said.

The police chief said freedom of expression must be respected but warned against spreading what he described as false information concerning an active criminal investigation.

“The facts must be established through evidence and lawful process. Anyone found to have broken the law must be held accountable under that same process,” Coleman said. “I will remain focused on my duty. I will not be intimidated.”

The US$ 317 Million Drug Case

The dispute comes against the backdrop of Liberia’s largest cocaine trafficking investigation, involving a shipment authorities have valued at approximately US$317 million.

Kwarbo, a former Highway Patrol chief, was stripped of his duties and later arrested and charged alongside Anthony T. Blaye, who served as Chief of the Liberia National Police Financial Crime Division.

The two have been accused of using marked police vehicles to escort a large cocaine shipment.

According to findings attributed to a joint Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency and Liberia National Police investigation, the cocaine was transported from a coastal landing site to a stash house using two police vehicles in an escort formation, with one vehicle reportedly positioned ahead of the shipment and another behind it.

Coleman said investigators uncovered evidence indicating that state security personnel played a role in moving the narcotics from the landing site to a holding location.

The foreign nationals, a Serbian and a Colombian, are being accused of bringing the cocaine into Liberia through aircraft and shoreline landing operations.

Liberian authorities publicly destroyed the seized cocaine on July 30 in what officials described as the country’s largest-ever drug destruction exercise.

Kwarbo’s Bail Fight

Kwarbo has denied wrongdoing and, in August, filed a motion seeking bail before Criminal Assizes “C” at the Temple of Justice.

His lawyers, including Cllr. Sayma Syrenius Cephus, maintain that he is being detained largely on allegations that he provided an escort to principal defendants after the alleged crimes had already been committed.

Kwarbo’s lawyers argue that the prosecution has not presented objective evidence placing him at the scene before or during the commission of the alleged offenses.

The defense has also challenged allegations attributed to co-defendant Christian Nyantee, arguing that Nyantee may have a motive to shift responsibility and that uncorroborated accomplice testimony should not be sufficient to establish the legal standard required for continued detention.

Kwarbo’s lawyers further contend that he had no prior knowledge of the alleged drug operation and that providing security escorts can form part of routine security duties during major national-security operations.

The Questions That Remain

The latest dispute leaves several questions unanswered.

It remains unclear who spoke to Spoon FM on Kwarbo’s behalf, whether the statement attributed to him was actually made by him, and how the statement emerged from the prison.

It is also unclear whether the written statement Kwarbo was quoted as referring to exists, what it contains, and whether investigators have sought or obtained his telephone records through the court.

Analysts say those questions may be resolved through evidence presented in court rather than competing accounts outside the courtroom.

For now, the public has two sharply different versions: one attributed to Kwarbo naming Coleman as the officer who allegedly ordered the escort, and another from Kwarbo’s family saying he never made the statement.

Kwarbo remains in detention and, under Liberia’s Constitution, is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Ghana and Liberia sit on the same stretch of West African coast, share the same colonial-era port infrastructure, and now, investigators say, share the same weakness: officials willing to sell access to it. In Ghana, prosecutors say a container flagged by port scanners for “clear structural irregularities” was cleared anyway, allegedly by Ghana Revenue Authority officers now facing charges alongside associates of fugitive Dutch trafficker Jos Leijdekkers. In Liberia, the police chief himself says officers ran marked cruisers as paid escorts for a cocaine landing, pocketing roughly $5,000 each. No one has yet tied the Liberian case to Leijdekkers directly — but the two countries’ parallel scandals expose the same regional vulnerability: ports and patrols for sale to the highest bidder.

By Rodney D. Sieh, rodney.sieh@frontpageafricaonline.com

MONROVIA — Two countries, an ocean apart in almost everything except geography and a shared coastline of vulnerability, are now telling versions of the same story. In Ghana, prosecutors say a port scanner flagged a shipment’s “clear structural irregularities” — and someone cleared it anyway. In Liberia, the country’s own police chief says officers ran marked cruisers as paid escorts for a coastal cocaine landing, pocketing roughly $5,000 apiece from a $10,000 envelope. Different currencies, different officers, same failure: the men who were supposed to stand between West Africa’s ports and its traffickers instead opened the gate.

Nothing yet on the public record ties the Liberian case to Jos Leijdekkers, the fugitive Dutch trafficker reportedly sheltering in Sierra Leone. But the pattern emerging on both sides of the Ghana-Liberia corridor — officials allegedly paid to look away — is precisely the kind of institutional crack that lets a network like his keep moving even as the walls close in elsewhere in the region. Leijdekkers, it now appears, isn’t just passing through West Africa’s ports. He’s paying his way through them.

The Dunkirk Shipment

It started, as these things often do, with a routine scan that wasn’t routine at all. On September 10, French customs officers at the port of Dunkirk pulled apart four containers that had sailed out of Ghana’s Tema Port and found roughly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine packed inside — a haul worth an estimated €225 million, or $261 million. Leijdekkers’ lawyers, Jan-Hein Kuijpers and Guy Weski, told the Dutch outlet NU.nl that their client denies any involvement.

Ghana’s Narcotics Control Commission moved quickly, arraigning four Ghanaians it says “represented and facilitated” Leijdekkers’ activities: Desmond Koranteng Curiel — who has also gone by “Paul Kweku Yeboah” and “Biggs” — along with Musah Attah (“Kromo”), Kweku Otchere, and Jessica Hartog. Dutch reporting fills in the backstory on Curiel, describing him as one of Leijdekkers’ “most important accomplices” and noting the two once shared a Dutch prison, where Curiel was serving time for a string of violent jewelry-store robberies. All four were remanded at the High Court in Accra on September 16 and return to court October 13.

The Officers Who Cleared It

But four tonnes of cocaine don’t leave a working port on its own — and this is where the case turns from a trafficking story into something closer to a story about the port itself. Separately from the four accused of fronting for Leijdekkers, Ghanaian prosecutors have charged three Ghana Revenue Authority officers — Frank Adu-Boahen, Andrews Tetteh Amponsah, and Togbe Agbeti — plus freight-forwarding director Francis Narh Amanor, over how the shipment made it out of Tema at all. The scan had already raised the alarm, according to the charges; the secondary inspection those red flags were supposed to trigger simply never happened. Adu-Boahen, prosecutors say, went further still — handing his own system login, the credentials used to sign off on scan results, to his co-defendants — and he’s now named as a beneficial owner of the shipment itself. Amanor was arrested September 15, Adu-Boahen the next day; all appeared in court September 17 and are due back September 24.

No filing has drawn a straight line from these three officers to Leijdekkers personally. The charges concern the shipment, not the man alleged to be behind it. But laid side by side, Ghana’s two cases sketch the same failure from opposite ends: a network with a documented personal tie to Leijdekkers on one side, a screening system allegedly hollowed out from within on the other. A scan overridden. A login shared. A shipment waved through.

Accra has noticed. MP Ntim Fordjour has publicly called for a parliamentary probe into what he’s calling Ghana’s emergence as a “cocaine coast,” and the presidency has since ordered inter-agency investigations and restored NACOC’s mandatory role in screening port cargo — the kind of response that suggests officials themselves see Dunkirk as a systemic breach, not a bad afternoon at customs.

A Familiar Pattern, Still Unconfirmed, in Liberia

Liberia’s own reckoning is unfolding on a parallel track. Inspector General Gregory Coleman has told reporters that Liberian National Police officers actively helped move roughly four tons of cocaine — “We have identified key state actors who played a role in transporting, escorting the movement of this narcotic substance,” he said. Two names have surfaced: Wadell W. Kwarbo, chief of the Highway Patrol Section, and Anthony T. Blaye, chief of the Financial Crime Division, both accused of escorting a shipment from a coastal landing site in marked police cruisers for roughly $5,000 each.

It’s a near-mirror image of what’s now public in Ghana — officials allegedly easing a shipment’s path for cash. What’s missing, so far, is the Leijdekkers connection. Coleman’s account doesn’t name him or link the seizure to a Dutch buyer or supplier, and no other source has made that connection either. Until someone does, the Liberia case stands on its own: proof of the same vulnerability across the region, not proof of the same hand behind it.

The Ghana-Liberia thread runs deeper than the two escort allegations, though. Liberian officials tell FrontPageAfrica that one of the foreign nationals now in Liberian custody carries a Ghanaian passport — one Ghanaian authority have since called fake — and a residence permit issued under two different names: Mihovil Vrhovac, also known as Michael. It’s not an isolated detail. Liberian authorities say most of the Eastern Europeans moving through these networks — Serbian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Georgian — are based in Accra and carry Ghanaian passports, some of them, FrontPageAfrica has learned, using those documents to enter Liberia as far back as 2021.

Liberia’s own case has produced two arrests so far tied to July’s $318 million bust: Spanish Colombian national Johann David Garces Grajales and Serbian former kickboxer Srđan Seleš. Prosecutors have charged five European nationals in total in the wider investigation, including Croatian nationals Nikolai Ivancic (also spelled Nicolad Avancik) and Mihovil Vrovac (Mio Vuvak), and Ukrainian national Tara Zaderieko (Taras Zargo) — the latter three indicted and now pursued in absentia through Interpol. Investigators have since traced four of them — Mihovil, Tara, David, and Seleš — to multiple visits to Freetown, with what officials describe as strong indications of ties to Leijdekkers. Mihovil, notably, was arrested in Accra at Liberia’s request — and then reportedly vanished.

A Region Under Siege

Dunkirk didn’t happen in isolation. A regional drug threat assessment obtained by FrontPageAfrica on Sunday describes an intensifying run of seizures across nearly every country on the West and Central African coast between June and September — a stretch that raises an uncomfortable question: how many of those cases, like Ghana’s, involved not just traffickers but the officials meant to be stopping them?

In Ghana alone, the Dunkirk arrests landed a week after NACOC shut down the Amsterdam Pub in Accra’s Laboma neighborhood on September 9, arresting three suspects while the principal target got away. Days before that, a joint NACOC-National Security raid in Weija caught a couple, Jibreel Hardi, 51, and his wife, Abiba Fatawu, 42, with cannabis, Tramadol, a firearm, and 50 rounds of ammunition. In August, police in the Upper East Region seized 500 cartons of Tramadol from a network allegedly running through Mali, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Senegal via the town of Widana — and earlier that month, 866 parcels of cocaine worth an estimated $6.9 million turned up hidden in sacks of gari at Tema Harbor.

Sierra Leone, where Leijdekkers is believed to be hiding, has had its own exposure: a September 10 tramadol seizure in Freetown that turned violent and left one person dead, and weeks before that, 51 kilograms of cocaine found in suitcases aboard a Brussels Airlines flight out of Freetown — leading to the arrest of a 22-year-old Belgian woman who wasn’t even on the flight’s passenger list.

Nigeria’s drug enforcement agency had one of its busiest stretches anywhere in the region — synthetic cannabis, opioids and other drugs found hidden in cargo, speakers and bread across eight states in mid-September, more than 2 million opioid pills and over 2,000 kilograms of cannabis seized in a nine-state sweep on September 6, and 329,865 kilograms of drugs destroyed in Lagos. Cabo Verde’s two main airports were hit within 24 hours of each other, couriers arrested arriving from Dakar and Bissau — one had swallowed 73 capsules of cocaine — while Brazilian authorities separately intercepted more than 100 kilograms bound for the islands hidden in drills, shock absorbers, a dental chair, and chocolate powder tins.

Liberia, for its part, has posted two of the region’s largest seizures in the same window: 3,971 kilograms in Duazon, Margibi County, on July 21 — worth roughly $317.68 million — and 237.6 kilograms at Roberts International Airport on June 8, hidden in six cargo boxes bound for Europe and valued near $19.2 million. Whether either shipment is the same one referenced in Coleman’s police-escort account remains unclear.

The wave has touched Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal as well — networks dismantled, drug dens destroyed, everything from tramadol to captagon seized across a sub-region where the trade has clearly stopped respecting borders.

Ghana as the Hub

Liberian authorities, watching two major busts of their own unfold in a matter of months, believe — based on FrontPageAfrica’s reporting — that Ghana has become the operational center of drug smuggling in West Africa. The pattern keeps repeating: a Ghanaian passport later called fake, a residence permit under two names, a community of Eastern European operatives based in Accra who’ve been slipping into Liberia on those same documents since at least 2021.

“Thank God our joint security forces have intercepted or made arrests in Liberia, and not shipped [drugs] out like Ghana, Sierra Leone, and others,” a senior member of Liberia’s joint security drug force told FrontPageAfrica on Monday.

Whether that holds — whether Liberia catches what Ghana’s port let through — may be the question the rest of this story is still being written to answer.

Monrovia — A shipment that triggered alarm this weekend over suspected cocaine and heroin has tested negative for narcotics, the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency says, in a reversal that clears those named in connection with the cargo and instead points to commercial herbal supplements as the likely contents.

By Rodney D. Sieh, Rodney.sieh@frontpageafricaonline.com

The shipment — nine cartons shipped via DHL from Malaysia, declared on their labels as botanical powder, coffee and candy and weighing a combined 202.5 kilograms — had already cleared customs at Roberts International Airport, with $437.65 in duties, levies and GST paid, before it was flagged during a subsequent clearance attempt at a DHL warehouse.

A Favor, and a Shipment

According to a preliminary field report obtained by FrontPageAfrica, the chain of events began with an act of goodwill. Martha Jallah, a 39-year-old Liberian woman residing in Sinkor, Montserrado County, was approached by an acquaintance — identified in the report only as Solange, an Ivorian national employed at the Ivorian Embassy in Monrovia. Solange asked Jallah to help clear the shipment on behalf of one of her countrymen: Tan Makado, a 60-year-old Ivorian national based in Abidjan.

At approximately 12:30 p.m. Saturday, the report states, Jallah went to the DHL warehouse to clear the cartons — the same shipment paperwork elsewhere describes as consigned to a Tan Gouet Gerard at an address on Fiamah Coleman Avenue, Monrovia. LDEA’s RIA Detachment intervened at that point, taking the cartons into custody for testing.

The field report stated that during initial, on-site screening, agents alleged the material tested positive for cocaine and heroin — a finding that prompted Chief Operations Officer Special Agent Milton K. Howard and members of LDEA’s Special Drug Squad, including Special Agent Buster Jolson, to transport the shipment to LDEA headquarters for confirmatory testing.

The Reversal

That confirmatory testing has now come back negative, according to authorities, who say they suspect the shipment instead contained dietary and herbal supplements manufactured in Malaysia — including, officials said, some products marketed for sexual enhancement.

The finding stands in sharp contrast to the initial field-level allegation and underscores the risk of publicizing preliminary results before laboratory confirmation. Individuals named in connection with the shipment — including Jallah, who was asked to help clear the cargo, and Makado, the Ivorian national identified as its intended recipient — appear to have been cleared of any wrongdoing related to narcotics trafficking, pending any further findings from LDEA.

What Was Inside

Photographs of the shipment reviewed by FPA show the cartons — marked with DHL’s “GoGreen Plus” branding and a shipping label citing waybill number 96 5091 8255 — packed with what outwardly resembled ordinary consumer wellness products. One carton examined bore the marking “Piece 3/9,” with an individual weight of 22.5 kg, consistent with the shipment’s total declared weight of 202.5 kg spread across nine separate boxes.

Inside were boxes of “Aceguard” and slim cartons of “Rocenta,” both marketed under the “Dynace” brand by Malaysia-based Dynace Global, alongside foil pouches of “Triple Root Coffee,” an arabica blend infused with ginseng-style root extracts. According to the products’ own labeling and marketing materials, Aceguard is promoted as an immune-support supplement containing plant stem cells and herbal extracts, while Rocenta is marketed as a botanical supplement containing ingredients such as rose placenta extract, bitter melon and ashwagandha. FPA has not independently verified which, if any, of these specific branded products are linked to the sexual-enhancement claims referenced by authorities.

A Possible Ivorian Connection

A separate document obtained by FPA — a Laissez-Passer issued by police in Danané, Côte d’Ivoire, and dated September 9, 2026 — records travel clearance for an Ivorian national identified as “Tan Makado A.,” born in 1964, traveling from Abidjan to Liberia. The name closely mirrors that of the Tan Makado named in the field report as the shipment’s intended beneficiary, though FPA has not independently confirmed the two are the same individual. With the shipment now cleared of narcotics, the significance of this travel document, if any, remains unclear.

Part of a Bigger Pattern

The episode unfolds against the backdrop of a year marked by major narcotics interceptions that have put Liberia at the center of West Africa’s cocaine-trafficking corridor:

• June 8, 2026 — LDEA and joint security intercepted 198 compressed plates of cocaine (about 237.6 kg) hidden in six cargo boxes at RIA, bound for Europe via Brussels Airlines, valued at an estimated US$19.2 million.

• Late June–July — Lawmakers summoned LDEA, immigration, customs and airport officials over the case; five suspects were eventually charged.

• July 22, 2026 — Security forces raided a warehouse in Duazon, Margibi County, detaining two foreign nationals in what was then called the country’s largest cocaine haul.

• July 21–23, 2026 — Police announced an even larger seizure: nearly four tonnes of cocaine, worth an estimated $317 million.

• August 19, 2026 — Former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor was arrested and later remanded in custody in connection with what officials called one of the biggest drug busts in Liberia’s history, alongside two Croatian nationals and a Ukrainian national.

Civil society groups have repeatedly flagged Liberia’s growing role as a transit hub for cocaine moving from South America toward European and Middle Eastern markets — and have criticized a pattern in which high-profile seizures generate headlines while prosecutions stall. This weekend’s episode illustrates a related concern: that unconfirmed field allegations can circulate and attach to named individuals before testing is complete.

Monrovia- For a few years after 2010, West Africa was, in the words of officials who fought to make it so, a hard place to move cocaine through. That reputation is now being tested harder than at any point in over a decade.

By Rodney D. Sieh, rodney.sieh@frontpageafricaonline.com

In July, Liberian security forces raided a property in Duazon, Margibi County, and pulled out nearly 4 metric tons of cocaine — the largest seizure in the country’s history, with an estimated street value that authorities eventually put at US$336 million once the full haul was tallied and burned. Two foreign nationals, a Serbian and a dual Colombian-Spanish citizen, were arrested. It came weeks after a smaller but still significant 237-kilogram seizure at Roberts International Airport, drugs that had been hidden inside cargo declared as seasoning cubes and traditional cloth. Executive Protection Service Director Sam Gaye later posted defiantly on social media after a video circulated online purportedly showing cartel members threatening retaliation over the bust, telling them to come collect their cocaine at the burn site himself.

Three months earlier and roughly a thousand miles east, Nigerian counter-narcotics agents stormed a fortified compound deep inside Abidagba Forest in Ogun State and found what officials called the largest clandestine methamphetamine laboratory ever uncovered in the country — an industrial operation staffed in part by Mexican chemists brought in to run production. A month after that, they found a second one, in Oyo State, again run jointly by Nigerians and a Mexican national flown in specifically for his synthesis expertise. Both labs were producing crystal meth for both local distribution and export.

And in Ghana, French customs officers at the port of Dunkirk pulled nearly 3.9 tons of cocaine worth an estimated US$261 million out of a container of plastic waste that had shipped from Ghana’s ports — the second Ghana-linked cocaine seizure in France in a matter of months, and coming only weeks after Australian authorities intercepted 320 kilograms of methamphetamine, worth roughly US$208 million, hidden inside containers of charcoal that had also originated in Ghana.

Four countries, four record or near-record seizures, all within roughly the same few months. Taken individually, each is a law enforcement success story. Taken together, they describe a region absorbing a volume and sophistication of trafficking it has not seen since the height of the “narco-state” scares of the early 2010s.

A familiar playbook, updated for synthetics

What makes this wave notable is not just its scale but its character. West Africa’s role in the cocaine trade has traditionally been that of a transit corridor — a stopover point where South American cocaine, moved across the Atlantic on fishing vessels and cargo ships, gets broken down and re-routed toward Europe, taking advantage of weak customs enforcement, porous borders, and, in some documented cases, the cooperation of corrupt officials.

That transit role has not gone away; if anything, the volumes moving through it appear to be growing, with independent estimates suggesting that a substantial share of the cocaine reaching Europe now passes through the region.

But the discovery of two industrial-scale methamphetamine laboratories in Nigeria within a single month marks something new: West Africa is no longer only a hub the cartels move product through, but increasingly a place they manufacture it. Producing synthetic drugs locally, rather than shipping finished product from Latin America, cuts transport risk and cost for the trafficking networks and suggests a level of infrastructure investment — precursor chemical supply chains, technical expertise flown in from Mexico, protected production sites — that goes beyond opportunistic smuggling.

Where Washington’s attention has gone

The backdrop to this shift is a U.S. counter-narcotics posture that has, by its own public statements, narrowed its aperture. DEA Director Terry Cole has repeatedly and explicitly named Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as the agency’s “number one priority,” framing the entire “Fentanyl-Free America” operation around dismantling those two organizations. The Trump administration has designated Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, tied continued security cooperation with Mexico to specific extradition and seizure targets, and, according to reporting, had a classified Pentagon directive prepared to explore military options against cartels in Latin America. It is an aggressive, resourced, high-profile campaign — aimed almost entirely at the Western Hemisphere.

It is worth being precise about what is and is not confirmed here. There is no public DEA announcement of an explicit policy to reduce operations in West Africa specifically — the shift in emphasis is inferred from where the agency’s leadership has publicly placed its priorities and rhetoric, not from a disclosed reallocation of West Africa personnel or budget. That distinction matters, and it is one worth an editorial follow-up query directly to DEA’s press office. What is not in dispute is the historical contrast: the region’s most-cited enforcement success story is now a decade and a half old.

When West Africa was a “no-go zone”

Between 2007 and roughly 2012, U.S. and Liberian authorities ran a series of joint operations that fundamentally altered the calculus for traffickers using West Africa as a route to Europe and the United States. The best-documented of these, Operation Relentless, was a multi-year undercover sting run by the DEA in coordination with the government of then-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It culminated in May 2010 when Liberia transferred eight defendants — including a Nigerian cocaine broker, a Russian pilot accused of running cocaine shipments, and several West African nationals — to the Southern District of New York to face trafficking charges, the country’s first such extradition-style transfer in more than three decades. Sirleaf’s own son, then director of Liberia’s National Security Agency, worked undercover on the operation. Additional co-conspirators, including a Colombian national extradited from Colombia and a Sierra Leonean who pleaded guilty in a related case, were added to the prosecution over the following two years. Sentences for those convicted ranged into the decades.

Alongside Operation Relentless, parallel DEA-led operations during the same period dismantled trafficking networks with footholds in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau — most infamously the 2013 sting that lured Guinea-Bissau’s former navy chief, José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, onto international waters and into U.S. custody, exposing how deeply cocaine money had penetrated that country’s military leadership. The cumulative effect of these cases was real: for a period afterward, West Africa’s reputation among traffickers as easy territory noticeably cooled.

That reputation, on the evidence of this year’s seizures, has not survived Washington’s shift in focus intact.

Why thismatters beyond the seizure statistics

The risk that concerns regional security analysts is not simply that more drugs are moving through West Africa — it is what the money that comes with them can buy. The cocaine trade passing through the region has, in past assessments, been valued in the billions of dollars annually, sums that dwarf the national budgets of several of the countries it passes through. Money at that scale does not need to corrupt an entire government to do damage; it needs to find a handful of officials in the right positions; a customs officer, an airport commander, a police unit with authority over evidence.

Liberia’s own case this year illustrates the mechanism in miniature. Within weeks of the Duazon seizure, Police Inspector General Gregory Coleman confirmed that officers had allegedly helped escort the cocaine after it entered the country: the chief of highway patrol and the head of the major crimes unit were charged, and a deputy police commander at Roberts International Airport became a suspect. A deputy police commissioner was separately dismissed after admitting he took a $10,000 bribe that compromised the investigation, though he was not accused of trafficking himself. President Boakai then moved further, ordering dismissals, suspensions, and criminal investigations against a wider list of officials across the police, the National Security Agency, Roberts International Airport, and the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency — a response the Executive Mansion described as necessary to protect the integrity of institutions implicated by the country’s two largest drug cases, together worth close to $390 million.

That is precisely the infiltration risk worth watching closely, in Liberia and across the region: not a single dramatic scandal, but the slow, case-by-case erosion of the individuals a state relies on to keep organized crime out of its institutions in the first place.

The response so far

To their credit, the region’s governments have not been passive. Liberia’s police leadership has pursued and publicly charged its own implicated officers rather than quietly reassigning them, and President Boakai has since directed the country’s joint security apparatus to identify and dismantle trafficking networks operating in the country in their entirety, a mandate that, if sustained, would go beyond the current cases to the wider infrastructure enabling them. Nigeria’s drug agency has dismantled two industrial labs in as many months and is pursuing the international networks behind them. Ghana’s narcotics commission moved quickly to arrest suspects tied to the Dunkirk seizure and has reported thousands of kilograms of narcotics and tens of millions of tramadol tablets intercepted over the past two years, alongside a stated shift toward targeting trafficking networks’ financial infrastructure rather than only their shipments.

Whether that response is enough will depend on a factor largely outside any single West African government’s control: whether Washington, having concentrated its most intensive counter-narcotics resources on Mexico, chooses to reinvest attention in a region that spent the last decade believing that fight was already won.