Monrovia – The International Bank Liberia Limited has up to 8:am Wednesday, March 29, 2017 to surrender the remaining bank documents of indicted Senator Varney Sherman dating as far back as of April 2010 or face severe punishment by the court.
Report by Kennedy L. Yangian – [email protected]
The bank, which had made several dodging attempts was issued its final warning by the Judge Yarmie Gbeisay of Criminal Court “C” last Friday after it said it needed additional time to find the documents for which the subpoena was issued by the court.
The International Bank (IB) was among several banks subpoenaed by the court in January 2017 to surrender the bank statements of indicted Senator Sherman, but the bank presented only 14 of 26 statements requested by the court.
Judge Gbeisay recalled that the bank has been served with subpoena twice to produce the documents.
“The action of the bank to continue to dodge the request of this court to have these instruments produced is contemptuous, considering this transaction took place more than six years ago, the court will consider the bank for today,” Gbeisay said last Friday, pardoning the bank.
The judge’s decision comes after Cllr. Theophilus Gould had told the court that the prosecution was unable to continue with the direct examination of its witness Blamo Kofa formerly Chief Investigator at the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC).
“Your honour, the prosecution begs the court that it is unable to continue the direct examination of its second witness Kofa without the bank statements of co-defendant Sherman from the International Bank (IB),” said Cllr. Gould.
According to the prosecution, the checks and bank statements of co-defendant Sherman is needed by the prosecution because it forms part of key evidence to prove the guilt of the defendants.
Witness Kofa and March Kollie have been the two state witnesses to take the witness stand so far in the landmark corruption case involving the former and current officials of government, in their general testimonies both witnesses have linked all the defendants to accepting or soliciting bribes.
Sherman and seven other former and current officials of government including former House Speaker Alex Tyler are on trial for economic sabotage, criminal conspiracy, facilitation and solicitation.
Their indictment in May and November 2016 respectively grew out of the Global Witness Report of May 2016 which accused the officials of allegedly receiving bribes from a British company Sable Mining to change the Public Procurement and Concession Commission (Act) in favor of Sable Mining to win the Wologisi concession in Lofa County.
However, Sherman has told the court that while it is true that he has received the checks from the IB Bank, the returned checks were no longer useful to his firm because the transaction took place seven years ago.
“The purpose of sending us statements of account and return checks each month is to reconcile our account, that is to compare with the debit entries on our statement, if satisfied the return checks have no utility to us,” said Sherman while responding to question from the prosecution about returned checks sent back by IB.
