Cllr. Fonati Koffa, now a Grand Kru County Representative may have been quiet over the ongoing Sable Mining Case in which he served as a prosecutor for more than a year now, at least since he became a lawmaker-but not anymore.
He has announced a major live press conference on Thursday July 4, to speak out. This is because the man at the center of the trial, fellow lawmaker defendant Varney Sherman may have gone too much too far off the line-And for this, Cllr. Koffa says defendant Sherman should rather confront his crime and stop his posturing and lies.
Cllr. Koffa told the New Dawn in a telephone interview Tuesday July 2, that defendant Sherman has gone too far being personal on him and has ignored the facts of the case and it is time that he speaks out so that the public would know the truth.
He said for instance, defendant Sherman alleges that he (Koffa) received US$4.5 million to prosecute the Sable Mining Case. He said with a constant repeat of this kind of lie by Varney Sherman, people would begin to believe that these kinds of allegations are true and this is why he must speak out now before it gets to a point where people would say “if it were not true why didn’t you say something then.”.
“There were some people who worked with me that never got pay at the end,” Koffa said. “So what would they think of me if they hear that I received USD$4.5 million and did not pay them-they will considered me to be a very wicked person,” Cllr. Koffa said.
Defendant Sherman who was the first defense witness to take the stance on Monday July 1, alleged among other things that Cllr. Koffa received about US4.5 million to prosecute the Sable Mining case.
The case involved an alleged US950, 000 that were allegedly dished out to several former and present government officials by defendant Sherman during the Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf regime to alter a mining law in favor of Sable Mining, a British Mining firm. The case is a fallout from a Global witness report titled: “The Deceiver.”
Moreover, testifying on Monday, Sherman further alleges that Cllr. Koffa’s ignorance of the Liberian legal system has been one of his (Koffa) problems in handling the case.
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Defendant Cllr. Varney Sherman went on further to allege that former President Sirleaf had consulted him (Varney Sherman) about her preferment of Cllr. Koffa as a Minister of Justice but that he (Sherman) discouraged the former president form doing so because of Cllr. Koffa’s former problems with US legal authorities when he then served as a judge of a US District Court.
But Cllr. Koffa described defendant Sherman’s testimony as a blatant lie and wonders why he failed to stick to the issue of his Bank records and emails which revealed that indeed he did received the money as alleged and distributed it as same.
Cllr. Koffa says Yahoo, a multimillion dollar company would not just sit and create such emails about defendant Sherman, not to mention the British Serious Fraud Office and some US anti-corruption agencies that were also instrumental in providing these circumstantial evidences.
On the allegations the he (Koffa) does not know anything about Liberian law, he said if he did not understand Liberian law then he wouldn’t have dux the bar exam.
Meanwhile, one of the young prosecutors who worked on the Sable Mining case, Atty. Kunkunyon Wleh Teh, said “Sherman is shocked because of the resilience of the young investigators and prosecutors who handled the Sable Mining case-unlike in the 1990 where he would say the judiciary is corrupt.”By Othello B. Garblah
