Liberia: No Indictment After 47 Days as Justice Minister Denies Offering US$500K to Star Witness in Former Vice President Case

Monrovia – When the Government of Liberia charged former Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor in August, officials spoke with confidence. The state said it had the evidence. It said the case was strong.

Forty-seven days later, there is still no indictment.

Howard-Taylor was stopped at Roberts International Airport on August 19 before she could board a flight to Accra, where she was due to speak at a forum. She was charged with drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy linked to an alleged transnational narcotics network. She has denied every charge. Her bail request was denied, and she has since been moved from Monrovia Central Prison to house arrest.

Now, a question is circulating in legal and political circles in Monrovia: is the state’s case stuck because its most important witness won’t take the stand without being paid?

The man at the center

Almost every road in the state’s case runs through one man: Sheikh Bashiru Kante.

During the preliminary examination at the Monrovia City Court, the state’s first witness, acting Crime Services Commissioner Raphael A. Wilson, testified that Kante, himself an alleged co-conspirator, voluntarily surrendered his cellphone, and that forensic analysis found WhatsApp messages and audio recordings linking him to Howard-Taylor.

According to Wilson, the alleged cartel was led by a man identified as “Nicholas,” who met Kante in Dubai in 2021, and Kante later connected the group to Howard-Taylor. The charging documents say she received US$135,000 from people linked to the cartel, including US$75,000 allegedly channeled through Kante for her Jewel Star Fish Foundation.

In other words, the alleged introduction, the alleged money and the alleged recordings all come from Kante.

The US$500,000 claim

Sources close to the defense told FrontPageAfrica that the government, not Kante, initiated contact, and that the state has since built its case so heavily around him that it now cannot proceed without him.

According to those sources, Kante is demanding US$500,000 before he testifies. They say he wants to take the money out of Liberia, deposit it in a bank of his choosing, and only then return to take the stand. He reportedly claims he fears for his life from supporters of the former NPFL, the National Patriotic Party and the Congress for Democratic Change, and that he does not trust the government.

The sources say the government has refused, and the two sides are at a deadlock.

FrontPageAfrica could not independently confirm the claim. The government, through Justice Minister Betty Lamin Blamo has denied offering Kante US$500,000 or any payment to testify against the former vice president.

A witness with a past

Kante’s credibility has been questioned since the case began. A court record shows he was arrested in Maryland in the United States on April 20, 2022, on wire fraud and money laundering charges unrelated to narcotics. His name also surfaced in a 2022 controversy over a Liberian diplomatic passport he held despite having no formal diplomatic role. Then-President George Weah ordered an investigation, and Howard-Taylor’s office at the time denied arranging the passport.

In August, Bong County Representative Marvin Cole openly questioned Kante’s reliability. “You can’t have Sheikh passing all around going to night clubs drinking champagne and trying to blackmail other people by giving information,” Cole said on Sky FM. “How authentic that the information Sheikh is providing can be proven in court?”

“The Grand Jury is not sitting”

The government’s explanation for the delay is that the Grand Jury is not in session. Last month, prosecutors were expected to argue that Howard-Taylor could be held pending the Grand Jury term, which at the time was expected later in September. That term has come and gone without an indictment.

Her defense says the law offers a way around this. They point to Section 15.5 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which allows a Circuit Court judge, on application by the prosecution showing the public interest requires it, to summon fifteen people to serve as a special Grand Jury with the same powers as a regular one.

“If the government truly possesses the ‘overwhelming evidence’ it has repeatedly claimed,” one source close to the defense said, “then the public is entitled to ask a simple question: why has there been no indictment, and why does the entire case appear to depend on one witness?”

Legal experts consulted by The Analyst newspaper last week made a similar point, saying the absence of a Grand Jury indictment after 41 days of restraint was constitutionally significant.

What’s at stake

For the government, the case is a centerpiece of its crackdown on drug trafficking, coming after the seizure of four tonnes of cocaine valued at US$317 million in July.

For Howard-Taylor, a former senator, former vice president and former first lady, every day without an indictment is another day under restraint without formal charges from a Grand Jury.

And for the Liberian public, the question is simple. Either the state has the case it says it has, or it doesn’t. Until a Grand Jury sits, no one will know.