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Hunting for Liberia’s Missing MillionsBy DOREEN CARVAJAL

MONROVIA, Liberia<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/liberia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>
—
How much money did Charles G.
Taylor<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/charles_taylor/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the deposed president of Liberia, siphon out of his destitute, war-shattered
country, and where is it?

For almost seven years, since an international warrant was issued for his
arrest, the search has stretched from the mangrove swamps and diamond fields
of West Africa to Swiss banks and shell corporations — a state-of-the-art
version of the sweeping asset hunts that have accompanied the fall of
autocrats since the shah of Iran’s demise in the 1970s.

Investigators have crawled in the dirt under porches and buildings in this
impoverished capital to seek out financial records. They have confronted
bankers and government officials on four continents. They have
cross-referenced mazes of documents charting the transfer of millions of
dollars into and out of dozens of accounts.

But they have come up dry for any money in Mr. Taylor’s name. In fact, four
years ago, Mr. Taylor was classified as “partially indigent” by the Special
Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague, where he is charged with instigating
murder, mutilation, rape and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in
Liberia and Sierra Leone that claimed more than 250,000 victims from 1989 to
2003.

That has left donor nations — the United States being the largest — to cover
his monthly $100,000 legal bill and the broader costs of his $20 million
trial.

But the investigators push on, and a review by the International Herald
Tribune of court transcripts, bank records, and newly available government
receipts and confidential prosecution memos indicates why they are reluctant
to give up the hunt.

Some of the records show how the country’s largest timber company sent tax
payments to Mr. Taylor’s private account rather than the national treasury.
Others trace huge payments made by the dominant cellphone company to people
suspected of being Taylor cronies. Others depict a web of front companies
and banks from Hong Kong to New York involved in the movement of millions of
dollars into Mr. Taylor’s accounts in Liberia.

“Money would go to an arms dealer or an ally and from there to a money
management firm and then back to Liberia, then cashed out and moved to
another bank account,” said Thomas R. Creal, an accountant from Chicago who
for five years has led the search for the United Nations.

Retained by Liberia, he and three law firms are developing a new strategy
involving filing civil damage claims against companies, governments and
international banks that they contend aided Mr. Taylor in illegal
transactions. The goal, after investigators have succeeded in freezing only
about $8 million held by Taylor relatives and associates, is to win
judgments for Liberia even if Taylor accounts cannot be found.

The estimates of hidden wealth — believed to have been extracted from
Liberia’s timber and diamond trades, its international merchant shipping
registry, tax coffers and the government of Taiwan — run from as high as $3
billion to a middling range of $280 million. Mr. Taylor’s own estimate is
zero.

Last year, the flamboyant former warlord taunted prosecutors in court,
dismissing the financial investigations as efforts to demonize him. “I
challenge any human being or organization in this world — I mean this planet
— to bring one bank account that Charles Taylor has money in,” he said. “I
have heard the prosecutor blatantly lie, saying, ‘We found millions.’ Bring
the millions here.”

Stephen Rapp, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues and a
former chief prosecutor on the case, said the hunt could continue for years.
“You will never find an account listed under Charles Taylor,” he said. “In
all of these asset recovery cases of former leaders who have been accused of
corruption or worse, it has taken a long time to achieve recovery. So this
is not going to end.”

*High-level targets*

In the banking world, investigators call high-profile targets, like deposed
heads of state or military officials, P.E.P.’s — “politically exposed
persons.” Financially speaking, Mr. Taylor is one of the most elusive.

The list has included Slobodan
Milosevic<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/slobodan_milosevic/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
of
Yugoslavia, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Sani
Abacha<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/sani_abacha/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the Nigerian military dictator who pocketed as much as $5 billion through
front companies and Swiss bank accounts, Swiss investigators say.

Since 1999, the Nigerian government has recovered more than $700 million
with Switzerland’s assistance.

The Taylor hunt has gone on as he has been imprisoned for four years in a
Dutch detention center — a long way down from when he ruled with a showman’s
flair, dressing in traditional African robes, cream safari suits or white
vestments at a mass “Liberia for Jesus” prayer rally in 2002.

Mr. Taylor, who favors pinstripe suits in court and is a recent convert to
Judaism, vehemently dismisses the criminal charges as based on “lies.” The
grisliest accusations came from an admitted former death squad commander,
Joseph Marzah, known as Zigzag, who described orders from Mr. Taylor to
engage in cannibalism and ritualistic eating of enemies.
U.N.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
peacekeepers<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/department_of_peacekeeping_operations/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
in
Sierra Leone were also targets, he testified, saying Mr. Taylor urged his
fighters to eat “them as pork.”

Financial suspicions about him go back to 1983, when he was fired for
embezzling nearly a million dollars while a government administrator. As a
renegade warlord in the ’90s, he controlled diamond-rich regions, timber
concessions, rubber plantations and iron ore deposits. As president, he
directed large timber companies to wire as much as $2 million of their taxes
to a personal account with the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment,
according to Liberian bank records.

His defense is that the money did not go to him personally but to buying
black-market weapons to thwart a U.N. weapons embargo aimed at quelling his
brutal wars with insurgent warlords and, through other warlords, Sierra
Leone.

Liberian legislators, said Mr. Taylor’s family spokesman, Sando Johnson,
authorized Mr. Taylor “to put money into a special account to fight the
war.”

In court testimony, Mr. Taylor said bluntly, “The country is at war. This is
our remedy.”

*The Taylor account*

Mr. Taylor holds an asset any P.E.P. would envy.

“He has a very common name,” said Daniel Thelesklaf, director of the
International Center for Asset Recovery in Switzerland. “One English bank
made a search of his name and found about 16,000 hits. It’s really like
finding the needle in the haystack.”

One place Mr. Taylor used his name was at the Liberian Bank for Development
and Investment in Monrovia. From 2000 to 2003, when his presidential salary
was $24,000, records obtained by Mr. Creal show more than $24 million moving
into and out of the account, passed from foreign banks, with Citibank in New
York acting as the clearinghouse and processing the transfers.

Most of the money came from the government of Taiwan — more than $20 million
in eight payments made while it was jockeying to maintain Liberia’s
diplomatic recognition against fierce competition from China.

In a statement, the Taiwan Foreign Ministry said that the money was
earmarked for AIDS medicine, a children’s center, vocational training and
charity contributions. In court, though, Mr. Taylor said the funds covered
military salaries, Balkan arms deals and the airlift of wounded bombing
victims.

Michel Lu, a Taiwan diplomat, said in an interview that his government
offered “deep regret” for a “humiliating” turn of events. He said that,
internationally isolated, it was under tremendous pressure from Mr. Taylor,
who “threatened to cut off relations,” and that it had since discarded
checkbook-style diplomacy.

Citibank, which has been criticized for its role in the clearinghouse
transactions involving Liberia, has defended its activities. The bank “fully
complied with all applicable laws and U.S. and international best practices
in place at the time,” said a bank spokesman, Adam Castellani. He said the
bank, which processes thousands of transfers daily, “works continually to
strengthen its own correspondent banking due diligence processes.”

What happened to the money is not clear. By the time of Mr. Taylor’s
indictment in 2003, his Liberian bank accounts were largely drained,
sometimes with groups of men taking out as much as $1.3 million in cash in a
single withdrawal, Mr. Creal said.

“Frankly speaking,” said Mr. Lu of Taiwan, “nobody can tell you where it
went.”

*The price of monopoly*

U.N. investigators said they believed that Mr. Taylor also extracted money
from companies that operated in Liberia and needed his good will.

They have pressed in Liberian courts for information about the entwined
companies PLC Investments and Lonestar Communications, suspecting they could
be a continuing source of income for Mr. Taylor. Lonestar, the nation’s
leading cellphone company, was essentially a monopoly for four years,
controlled by two Taylor financial advisers through PLC, a holding company,
a U.N. report says. They sold 60 percent of Lonestar to a Lebanese group,
Investcom, which in turn was acquired by a South African cellphone company,
MTN Group, in 2006.

Mr. Taylor’s former vice president, Moses Blah, and other former ministers
testified before the government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that
Mr. Taylor became a secret part owner in Lonestar and granted it an
exclusive license to run a mobile network, dismissing officials who urged an
open market.

Since then, Mr. Creal has found records of huge Lonestar checks issued to
junior employees whom he suspects were allies of Mr. Taylor.

Low-level PLC employees who earned less than $5,000 a year received enormous
checks in 2007 and 2008, a U.N. report says. One of them, who earned about
$1,800 yearly, received checks for $1.22 million. Others received more than
$2 million in checks until 2008.

A search warrant turned up bank statements that showed checks deposited by
the employees in another Liberian bank, Ecobank, and the money being drawn
out immediately in cash.

In an e-mail message, Frans Joubert, chief executive of Lonestar, said,
“Lonestar cannot comment on issues regarding shareholders and shareholding
companies.”

Mr. Taylor’s spokesman, Mr. Johnson, asserted there was no hidden Lonestar
investment. “Complete foolishness,” he said.

*A ‘personal fiefdom’*

This year, the impoverished Liberian government retained Mr. Creal and other
legal advisers on a contingency basis to explore civil suits against more
than a score of companies and banks, on the premise that they were “aiders
and abettors” who helped Mr. Taylor move money illegally or without
following banking regulations.

The strategy is, in part, an acknowledgement that they may never find money
attached to Mr. Taylor himself, which many of them believe is hidden in
offshore accounts outside their grasp.

Mr. Taylor’s trial, in its second year, is slowly proceeding toward a
verdict. He faces an unspecified sentence in a British prison if convicted.

Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/ellen_johnson_sirleaf/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a Taylor supporter turned harsh critic, said that recovering money will be
hard. “Mr. Taylor ran this country like it was his personal fiefdom,” she
said in an interview. “Resources were given to people in a manner that
pleased him, and there were no systems or institutions.”

Regardless of the outcome, the money hunt will continue. “There were guns,
diamonds, cash, timber and gold moving around West Africa for the individual
personal gain of heads of state, boy generals, international terrorists,
diamond dealers and gunrunners,” said David M. Crane, a former prosecutor on
Mr. Taylor’s case and a professor at Syracuse
University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/syracuse_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
College
of Law in New York.

“The saga isn’t over.”
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co