Complete Lack of Professionalism on Part of MFDP and IAA

Dear Mr. Editor,

I read your article entitled, “Presidential Appointees Receive Pay after Dismissal or Resignation” in the January 18 edition of your Online Newspaper.

My name was mentioned as one of those paid after resignation/dismissal from Government and I have been receiving countless amounts of phone calls and messages.

Please permit me to respond and set the record straight.

First and foremost, I resigned from Government in June 2015 and left the country to take up an offer in Paris, France.

The President accepted my resignation and copied both the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance and Development Planning in her reply to me. I am sure the communication to the MFDP was, among other things, meant to get me off the payroll.

In my absence, between July and September, the MFDP continued payment to my accounts (LD and USD) at the Liberia Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI).

Apparently, when it was noticed, the MFDP requested LBDI to debit my account (See attached communication from MFDP to LBDI).

I knew nothing about all these transactions taking place since I was out of the Country.

I returned to the country in December 2015 and noticed my bank statement showed inflows and outflows of cash in the amount reported in this article.

From your article, there are few things we need to clarify here:

• I resigned in June 2015 and the Ministry of Finance and Development was notified by the President;
• There were inflows and outflows of cash in and out of my account without the LBDI or the MFDP informing me;
• It seems that the audit was commissioned by Dr James Kollie after November 2015, at which time the LBDI had debited my account. In my case, was there a need for an audit that will mention my name like it is in this article? I think the audit should have had less to do with me and more to do with the MFDP;
• My name was mentioned in an audit report without the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) notifying me or seeking my response before publishing their report, especially on something I knew nothing about

This shows a complete lack of professionalism on the part of the MFDP and the IAA.

I demand that the MFDP speak to the issue and clarify the recovery of payments made to my accounts as mentioned in the article.

This is important because it appears to some who read the article that I knew about the transactions and had to be confronted by the MFDP to pay back.

Thanks for affording me the opportunity to set the record straight.

Regards,

Ousman S. Tall, Contributing Writer