On this Friday, jurors will listen to the last pitches –
the final voices in a case that has bent the country’s law and politics into a single, tense line.
The answer they render will be less a clean legal doctrine than a public adjudication of where Liberia draws the line between national security spending and accountability.
Nearly two years after the Joseph Boakai administration’s July 2024 indictment of top figures from the George Weah era for what prosecutors call questionable national-security spending, defense and prosecution lawyers will make their closing arguments.
What happens in that courtroom will not only determine guilt or innocence; it will test the boundaries of national-security authority in Liberia and the limits of accountability in an age of fierce partisan memory.
The characters are familiar by now: Samuel D. Tweah Jr., the former finance minister who returned from abroad to post an $8 million bond; Nyanti Tuan, the former acting justice minister who sits under the microscope; the ex-director of the Financial Intelligence Agency and the man who advised Weah on National security matters during his six-year rule and others swept up in an allegation of an “elaborate scheme” to move millions from the Central Bank into operational accounts and then into the shadows.
The prosecution’s initial portrait was cinematic in its clarity: transfers authorized under the guise of national security, withdrawn with no paper trail, a state defrauded of millions meant for joint security operations.
But the trial, like many public dramas, has been more crooked than that first photograph suggested.
Defense theory: law, procedure, and institutional insulation
The defense has been disciplined and juridical in tone. Its central claim is statutory and constitutional: the accused acted within the architecture of national-security governance as written in the 2011 National Security Reform and Intelligence Act (NSRI) and under the Public Financial Management (PFM) law. Section 3(b) of the NSRI, the defense insists, explicitly names the Minister of Finance among members of the National Security Council. That membership, the lawyers argue, confers statutory protections and places the questioned acts within the policy domain of national security — a realm the Constitution and precedent reserve largely to the executive.
The defense has also framed the case as a procedural misstep by the prosecution: the transfers were subject to a presidential audit and a national-security accounting process, not the ordinary forensic trail prosecutors attempted to follow. That procedural channel, they claim, was bypassed by investigators, leaving the state without the specialized operational records that would be necessary to prove misspending.
Tactically, the defense focused on piercing the prosecution’s evidentiary seams: cross-examinations that turned on whether the principal investigator and other witnesses had the methodological foundation to trace operational expenditures, and whether statutory texts had been correctly read.
The prosecution theory: accountability where national-security authority becomes a veil
Core narrative: The government framed the case as an “elaborate scheme” to divert public funds under the cover of national-security spending — an allegation that turns on intent, documentation, and whether ordinary oversight was bypassed.
Evolving focus: As the trial progressed, the prosecution’s theory narrowed. Early public filings emphasized lack of authority or formal membership in the NSC; in court, and especially after defense witnesses (including former ministers) gave statute-based explanations, prosecutors shifted toward an accountability frame: even if transfers could be justified procedurally, did the defendants account for or lawfully expend the money?
Evidentiary gaps: The prosecution’s case was hobbled by notable absences — most consequentially, the failure to call financial or legal experts to rebut the statutory readings offered by defendants like Samuel Tweah. Without expert witnesses to challenge Tweah’s statutory interpretation of transfers and the PFM law, his testimony stood largely uncontradicted on technical authority questions.
Investigative focus and limits: Prosecutors relied on lead investigator testimony (notably from Baba Borkai of the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission) to defend the probe’s methodology. But Borkai acknowledged he had not pursued operational accounting for the disbursed funds, focusing instead on which agencies received money. That omission undercut efforts to prove the funds were misused.
The Supreme Court intervention
A procedural earthquake: Defense teams attacked a December Supreme Court opinion that, in a three-justice majority, had held the Finance Minister and others were not covered by statutory NSC protections. Within minutes of its release, defense lawyers said the majority had overlooked Section 3(b) of the NSRI — which names the Finance Minister — and petitioned for reargument. The high court granted that petition.
Stakes beyond the defendants: The re-argument is not merely bureaucratic hair-splitting. It raises foundational questions about the constitutional scope of executive authority, the reach of statutory immunity, and whether some acts of state — especially those claimed as national security — are insulated from ordinary criminal processes.
Politics, perception, and the courtroom’s echo
From the beginning, defendants characterized the indictment as politically motivated — “a witch-hunt” intended to blunt Weah-era figures and their political futures. Prosecutors denied that the charges were partisan, insisting the rule of law required accountability.
Public and private anxieties: Observers suggested the prosecution’s reticence to produce experts may reflect unwillingness among specialists to publicly contradict practices of the current administration, or simply investigative gaps. Either way, the result was that the trial became as much about institutional courage as about accounting ledgers.
What a verdict will mean
A conviction would validate a muscular view of accountability that shrugs off executive insulation when money vanishes into opaque security operations. An acquittal or a decision in favor of defense legal theories would signal a stronger structural protection for executive discretion on national-security spending and tighten procedural requirements for bringing such cases.
– Writes Festus Poquie
