The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
May 26, 2019

Finance Minister Samuel Tweah

Samuel Tweah, Finance and Economic Planning Minister, who is perhaps Liberia’s most intolerant and arguably among the most corrupt Finance Ministers that ever hold the post, apparently presided over US$25 million Mop-Up exercise conducted by the country’s Technical Economic Management Team (TEMT) of which the General Auditing Commission’s forensic investigation has revealed that US$2,378,187.00 has not been properly accounted for during the US$25 million Mop-Up exercise. The report revealed US$491,769.00 was spent on 15 entities, which the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) claimed to have participated in the mop-up exercise; however, those entities denied participation in the process.

In addition, the report said that, per CBL records, 27 entities received US$702,680.00 during the Mop-up exercise, but none of them were registered as per document review from the Liberia business registry records. The report also said that 52 entities, per the CBL record, received US$1,092,292.00 but did not answer or reply to telephone calls or text messages from GAC auditors. Further, the GAC report explained that 8 entities that received US$163,446.00 during the mop-up exercise, per CBL records, were not in operation during the field visit.

Liberians politics is a den of thieves, but for at least over the past 8 years, I have been warning Liberians about a particular brood of thieves, which for lack of a more elegant descriptive idiom I will call the den of loud mouth talking thieves. These species of crooks comprise of thieving politicians who mask their corruption with ritualistic performances of incompetent leadership. They speak well and have mastered the University of Liberia palava hut jargons, or jargons of technocratic governance, becoming the darlings of donors, civil society, and neoliberal institutions. They are the politicians who say the right things, bamboozle the naive with the hifalutin language of good governance and transparency. They know what to do and what to say to impress their local and international interlocutors.  They’ve mastered the pretentiously vacuous vocabulary of the donor’s world and are and development-speak even though they are not adept at governance as evidence in their actions. They are the first public officials to challenge others to a public transparency contest, the first to declare their budgets to be public documents. They are lauded for crafting and implementing open budgets and make sure that they co-opt renown international and local developmental partners into their programs, knowing that these agencies would then become their unwitting propaganda arm. It is a good political and technocratic theater. The loudmouth talking thieves can make mesmerizing presentations with or without notes or PowerPoint slides and hide their thievery behind confusing numbers, graphs, eloquent speeches, and pie charts. When accused of corruption or other misconducts they do not retreat or perform contrition and are not rattled. Instead, they arrogantly go on the offensive. They deploy counterattacks and counter-accusations as a tactic of deflection, distraction, and defense. These gestures are all carefully publicized and calculated to reinforce the public perception that they are competent, intelligent, and different from the average Liberian politicians or the populace. It is an elaborate charade.
The loudmouth talking thieves are media savvy; they work the press and seduce and induce them into buying their obfuscation, sophistry, and glib rhetoric by spreading some of their loots to the press which in due course sing their praises. The thing is they do not believe that the laws and rules governing the conduct of public officials apply to them.  Sadly, some Liberians believe that politicians and bureaucrats perceived as intelligent and competent deserve different ethical rules, and therein lies the problem. Samuel Tweah is perhaps the most illustrious member of the club of the loudmouth thieves.  His articulateness and technocratic awareness relative to other Liberian politicians or the general populace have served to inoculate him against accountability. As a result, he has arrogantly continued to thump his nose at the ethics, rules, and laws while craftily and fraudulently playing the competence and good governance cards. 

Remember, when he was accused of upgrading from business class to first class on the government’s recent trip to Beijing for the Forum on China-Africa Corporation (FOCAC) Summit. He responded “I’m entitled to travel on business class and the cost of my ticket was US$12,700, so let’s get that fact clear… I paid the upgrade difference. If I don’t have US$4,000 to sit in a first class – it’s unfortunate. I worked in this country for the past seven years as a consultant for the Ministry of Finance, after that I went to the African Development Bank where my salary exceeds US$500,000 a year,” even though his annual salary at ADB was Tweah’s actual annual salary was US$120,164 per annum at the time.

Also, when ambassadors of United States, Sweden, France, Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, Japan, and European Union signed a letter warning the government of Liberia of repercussion for ‘irregular withdrawal of project for unapproved expenditures? His response was neither denial nor contrition. Instead, he arrogantly coined the termed “borrowing initiatives.” This outburst exemplifies the audacious but toxic mix of corruption, arrogance, sense of entitlement, and unreflective indignation that one encounters in the loud mouth talking corrupt individuals.

On March 11, 2019, the World Bank wrote Finance Minister Samuel Tweah to repay the amount of US$3,285,750 of “ineligible expenditures” back to the Bank’s account. The money, according to the bank, includes US$35,750 worth of “stolen laptops” and unapproved debit of US$2 million, both from the Ebola Emergency Response Project; while the rest came from other unapproved debits from the Liberia Social Safety Nets Project under the Ministry of Health (US$500.000); Public Sector Modernization Project (US$500,000); Liberia Forest Sector Project under the FDA (US$200,000) and the Liberia Urban Water Supply Project (US$50,000).
Samuel Tweah didn't see anything wrong with his conduct in upgrading from business class to first class on the government’s recent trip. He certainly doesn't see anything wrong with US$2,378,187.00 that has not been properly accounted for during the US$25 million Mop-Up in which he presided over neither the US$3,285,750 demands from the World Bank for “ineligible expenditures.” That is how corrupt but marginally loud mouth politicians behave. They know that their reputation for technocratic incompetence, deserved or not, will insulate them or at least confuse Liberians. They almost feel entitled to a pass on account of their grammatical competence and choreographed, elaborate pretenses to governing ability. They are slick operators, hard to pin down because there are always compatriots who are taken by their polish and educated conduct and are willing to overlook all else.

Loudmouth and corrupt politicians perceived to be competent, enlightened, and well educated are the most dangerous kind of political thieves because they are the most difficult to hold accountable. Let me explain. The average Liberian thieving attracts outright scorn because, in addition to being woefully incompetent, poorly spoken, unintelligent, pathetically under-read and uninformed, and incapable of understanding policy and poetics, he lacks the linguistic resources to express his thoughts clearly, lucidly, and persuasively. Liberians tend not to accord these average Liberians any benefit of the doubt and do not try to mitigate their wrongdoing. Moreover, because they are inarticulate and unintelligent, their attempts to explain themselves or defend or deny their wrongdoing only attract more derision and unvarnished contempt.
When it comes to folks like Samuel Tweah, however, there are always Liberians who will be seduced by the fact that they are better informed, perceived as more intelligent, and have a better command of the University of Liberia palava jargons than the average Liberians. These Liberians will extend multiple benefits of the doubt to Tweah and his ilk, refusing to see that intelligence and corruption can and do coexist and that in fact intelligence, perceived or real, is the perfect camouflage for corruption. 

Tweah knows that he can always count on this cult of Cdcians, this naïve group of compatriots, to dilute the ethical clarity that should inform attitudes towards corrupt, but pretentiously incompetent politicians. All that needs to happen is for consensus on the latter’s corruption to disappear and for ambivalence to enter the picture. 

The loudmouth talking corrupt individuals are beneficiaries of ambivalence on the part of Liberian regarding their corruption. That is precisely what they want and try to produce: ambivalence on their corruption profiles. If we cannot call corruption by its only name because the perpetrator is seen as being more intelligent, informed, and competent than the average citizens, we are essentially creating a special coven or category for thieves who are beyond reproach and cannot be held accountable. These crooked politicians are all too happy to dazzle us into complicit silence with their refined University of Liberia palava hut jargons and hackneyed policy jargons.  Samuel Tweah personifies this phenomenon. Sadly, Tweah has never operated alone and still serve at the pleasure of President George Weah, and will continue to serve as long as President Weah wants him to.

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About the Author:  Karweaye is a Liberian residing in the United States of America and can be contacted at s.karweaye1668@student.tsu.edu

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