At the end of March this year, containers filled with newly printed money were taken from the port at the international airport of the capital Monrovia by Central bank staff. This money was being transported from the port at Monrovia to the Liberian Central Bank. However the money never arrived at its destination.
An inquiry has since been launched into the disappearance of the newly printed bills worth close to 100 million US dollars that were destined for Liberia’s central bank, the government of the impoverished west African country has said.
“This government will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible for the act,” Information Minister Lenn Eugene Nagbe told AFP.
“It is confirmed by the investigation that the amount of the total money is 15 billion,” Liberian dollars ($97 million, 83 million euros), he said.
The investigation was launched on August 8, the justice ministry said, following “information surrounding the arrival of containers and bags of moneys” at the port and the international airport of the capital Monrovia. According to the government’s initial findings, the cash arrived between November 2017, when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was still president, and August this year. The current government led by President George Weah took over in January.
“The current administration was not informed about the arrival of the containers and bags of moneys into the country,” the ministry statement said.
Online daily Frontpage Africa reported that the containers were taken from the port around the end of March by central bank staff but never arrived at their destination.
In addition to tracing the money, investigations are currently underway to determine how many Liberian dollars the previous administration had printed overseas and how much of it was actually injected into the economy, where both US and Liberian dollars are in circulation. George Weah has vowed to start a fight against corruption in relation to a series of monetary and fiscal measures in order to stabilise the local currency and tackle the current inflation problem.
The central bank has injected 25 million US dollars into the economy to mop excessive liquidity of Liberian dollars, he said.
In March, Weah said he had “inherited a country that is very broke, depleted by political malfeasance”.
