Authorities have charged a Liberia National Police (LNP) division chief, a police highway patrol chief, and several others in connection with an alleged international cocaine trafficking operation that used a Montserrado County fishing property as a smuggling front. Investigators say the group escorted cocaine shipments using police vehicles and cash payoffs, according to a Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) report approved this week.
By Rodney D. Sieh
Monrovia – Two senior Liberia National Police officers are facing criminal charges after an investigation concluded they helped escort cocaine shipments brought into the country through a Montserrado County waterfront property that investigators say was disguised as a fishing business.
According to a Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency (LDEA) report, the case centers on Anthony T. Blaye, chief of the LNP’s Financial Crime Division, and Wadell W. Kwarbo, chief of the Highway Patrol Section, who investigators allege used their police vehicles to escort drug shipments and accepted cash payments for their involvement.
The report traces the operation back to 2024, when a Serbian national identified as Srdan Seles, along with two men known only as Michael and Tom or Tony, allegedly flew an aircraft into Liberia with the help of Edison M. Brown and Mohammed Alpha Bah. The plane landed at Roberts International Airport before being moved to a private airfield in Sinkor, investigators say, under the guise of starting a domestic air travel business.
Investigators allege the group then built out a network of recruits. Brown and Bah are accused of recruiting a man named Jammel V. Jallah, who in turn brought in Christian L. Nyantee and a man named Caycee Nelson, installing Nelson as manager of what was pitched as a domestic commercial travel business.
According to the report, once he was in place, Nelson was told the real purpose was moving mineral exports through Roberts International Airport, and he was asked to find a senior airport official willing to cooperate. Investigators say Nelson reached out to Mark Egon Kuiah, the airport’s deputy manager for operations, who agreed to work with the group.
With that airport contact secured, the report says the group shifted its focus to finding farmland. Alongside Brown and Bah, the men allegedly scouted several counties, including Grand Bassa, Bong, Nimba, Maryland and Grand Kru, looking for open, flat “savanna” land where a plane could land discreetly.
When that search came up empty, the group allegedly turned to Royesville, a township on the Po River near the Atlantic coast, where they told local leaders they wanted land for a fishing business. Township officials, believing the deal was legitimate, sold them property at the riverbank, which the buyers then fenced off with barbed wire, according to the report.
Investigators say the fishing business was never real. Instead, cocaine was allegedly brought in by sea, transferred from a larger vessel offshore onto canoes, and paddled ashore at the Royesville property before being moved inland.
The report details one such shipment in detail. On May 29, 2026, according to the investigation, an officer with Liberia’s National Security Agency (NSA) arranged for Blaye and Kwarbo to help move cocoa bags of cocaine to Thinker Village in Paynesville. Early the next morning, the report says, the group met contacts arriving from Royesville and escorted a van and truck carrying the drugs toward Roberts International Airport, with Blaye and Kwarbo trailing behind in their marked police vehicles.
The report goes on to allege that after the delivery, officers met at a military barracks where an envelope containing $10,000 in cash was handed over and later split among several people involved, including $5,000 each to Blaye and Kwarbo.
Blaye, for his part, gave investigators a different account of that night, saying he had gone out to a nightclub and later joined colleagues at a firing range, insisting he believed he was there for weapons practice rather than anything connected to drugs. His statement, included in the report, describes a night of missed calls, mixed-up plans, and a promised tank of gas rather than any admission of wrongdoing.
Based on the findings, investigators charged Blaye under Liberia’s penal code with criminal conspiracy, facilitation and solicitation, along with violations of the country’s 2023 drug law covering unlicensed trading and illicit trafficking of controlled substances. The case has been signed off by the LDEA’s chief investigator, the LNP’s chief of anti-narcotics, and the head of the police Crime Services Division.
The investigation lists several others as still “to be identified,” suggesting the case may widen as authorities continue tracing the network.
