This is the case that shakes right now the Liberia President George Weah (in office since January 2018) and the Central Bank of this West African country. Everything started from an investigation launched last September to take stock of an order made in 2016 by the issuing agency to manufacture the equivalent of 100 million dollars in Liberian currency to replace user tickets.
Liberia prints its currency in Sweden. Only problem, the decision of the Central Bank had not required the approval of the Senate. And a scandal never arriving alone, the amount ordered in two steps is not entered entirely in the books of the bank. According to a study commissioned by the Weah government from the US firm Kroll, 6 billion Liberian dollars would be missing. More importantly, the money ordered did not replace the old banknotes in circulation.
Consequence, sudden inflation due to the increase in the money supply in circulation unrelated to the creation of wealth. Anxious to show off, the Weah government has undertaken to buy old notes from traders against the dollar. An operation that had the merit of lightening the central bank of some of its reserves but never restore balance. The notes taken from the traders have even been reinjected back into the circuit.
According to a report released Thursday by the Liberian government, $ 16.5 million has been diverted. So many clusters of clues that led to the arrest of Charles Sirleaf, former vice-governor of the Central Bank and son of former President Ellen Sirleaf and Orbor Hagba, director of savings of the institution. Charles Sirleaf resigned in August after the breakup of this case, a symbol of Liberia’s bad governance.
This is similar to the first crisis of President George Weah by statements of the Minister of Information, Lenn Eugene Nagbe, indicating that the new administration had not been informed of the arrival of these tickets by the former president Sirleaf, to whom George Weah succeeded.
George Weah, who had opened an investigation by a special commission and asked for assistance including the US FBI, had called for “patience” to his fellow citizens, some of whom had protested to claim that “return containers”. In early October, the Central Bank had already assured that no container had disappeared.
