Chocolate City, Gardnersville

Monrovia, Liberia

March 7, 2014

Cllr. James N. Verdier, Jr.

Executive Chairperson, Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission

Gurley Street, Monrovia, Liberia

CC : Her Excellency Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf : Mr. Alieu Ngum

President, Republic Of Liberia Executive Director (Sudan,

Executive Mansion/Foreign Affairs Ministry Gambia, Liberia, Ghana etc.)

Monrovia, Liberia c/o Margaret Kilo

Resident Representative

: The Hon. Speaker & Members of the House African Development Bank

Of Representatives, Capitol Building Group, Sophie Community

Capitol Hill, Monrovia, Liberia Old Congo Town, P.O. Box 18144

Monrovia, Liberia

: The Hon. President Pro Temp & Members of

Of the Senate, Capitol Building : Mr. John Mark Winfield

Capitol Hill, Monrovia, Liberia Director for Mission to Liberia

United States Agency for

: Madam Deborah Malac International Development

United States Ambassador to Liberia (USAID), 502 Benson Street

U.S. Embassy, 502 Benson Street Monrovia, Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia

: Ambassador Attilio Pacifici

: Madam Karin Landgren Head, Delegation of European

United Nations Secretary General Special Union to Liberia

Representative to Liberia 100, UN Drive, Mamba Point

UNMIL Headquarters, Pan African Plaza P.O. Box 10-3049

Tubman Boulevard, 1st Street, Sinkor Monrovia, Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia

: Amb. Chigozie F. Obi-Nnadozie

: His Excellency Mr. Naoto Nikai Nigerian Ambassador to Liberia

Ambassador of Japan (Liberia, Ghana etc.) Nigerian Embassy, Oldest

Embassy of Japan, P.O. Box GP 1637 Congo Town, Tubman

5th

Avenue, West Cantonments, Accra, Ghana Boulevard, Monrovia, Liberia

: His Excellency Zhang Yue : The Country Director

Ambassador of China to Liberia c/o Michael Nyumah Sahr

Chinese Embassy, Congo Town Communications Associate

Monrovia, Liberia World Bank Monrovia Office

Bright Building

Sekou Toure Ave., (UN Drive)/ : Office of Auditor General

Gibson Streets, Monrovia, Liberia General Auditing Commission

Ashmun Street, Monrovia, Liberia

: Mr. Thomas Doe-Nah

Executive Director, Center For : Mr. Archie Sannon, President

Transparency & Accountability in Coalition for the Transformation

Liberia, CENTAL, Atop Luck Pharmacy Of Liberia, Marketplace Building,

Opposite JFK, 2nd

Street, Mon-Lib. Carey Street, Monrovia, Liberia

: The Party Executives, Unity Party : Mr. Vandarlark Patricks, National

Congo Town, Monrovia, Liberia Director, Campaigners for

Change, Marketplace Building

: The Party Executives Carey Street, Monrovia, Liberia

Congress For Democratic Change (CDC)

Congo Town, Monrovia, Liberia : Center For the Exchange of Intel-

lectual Opinions (CEIO)

: The Party Executives Carey Street, Monrovia, Liberia

Movement for Progressive Change (MPC)

Congo Town, Monrovia, Liberia : Center for the Promotion of

Intellectual Development

: The Party Executives Carey Street, Monrovia, Liberia

Liberty Party, Monrovia, Liberia

: Friend of Friends Hathia Assoc.

: The Party Executives Carey Street, Monrovia, Liberia

Liberia People‟s Party (LPP)

Monrovia, Liberia : The President & Members of the

Federation of Liberian Youths

: The Party Executives (FLY), Monrovia, Liberia

Alliance for Peace & Democracy (APD)

Vamoma House, Sinkor, Monrovia, Liberia : The President & Members of the

University of Liberia Student

: The President & Members of the Union (ULSU), Capitol Hill

Press Union of Liberia (PUL) Monrovia, Liberia

Clay Street, Monrovia, Liberia

: The President & Members of the

: Chairman Sheik Kafumba Konneh & Student Council Leadership

Members of the National Muslim Council African Methodist Episcopal

of Liberia (NMCL), Vai Town, P.O. Box 417 University, Mon., Lib.

Monrovia, Liberia

: President Dee Maxwell Kemayan

: President Rev. Dr. Jonathan B. B. Hart & & Members

Members of the Liberia Council of Churches Liberia Business Association

(LCC), Monrovia, Liberia Monrovia, Liberia

: Chairman Zanzan Karwar & : The President & Members of the

Members of the National Student Council Leadership

Traditional Council of Liberia Stella Maris Polytechnic

Monrovia, Liberia Capitol Hill, Monrovia, Liberia

: The President & Members of the : The President & Members of the

Student Council Leadership Student Council Leadership

African Methodist Episcopal Zion University United Methodist University

Benson Street, Monrovia, Liberia Ashmun Street, Monrovia, Liberia

: The Liberia Correspondent : Mr. Jonathan Paye-Layleh

Radio France International (RFI) Liberia Correspondent

Offices of the Press Union of British Broadcasting Corporation

Liberia, Clay Street, Mon-Lib. Offices of the Press Union of Lib.

Clay Street, Monrovia, Liberia

: The Party Executive

National Patriotic Party (NPP) : Mr. Sampson S. Tokpah

Congo Town, Monrovia, Liberia Head of Secretariat

Liberia Extractive Industries

: Mr. Julius Jensen Transparency Initiative (LEITI)

National Coordinator Bureau Office of the Budget

Liberians United to Reform Liberia Office, Adjacent the Executive

Cocoanut Plantation, Mamba Point Mansion, Monrovia, Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia

Dear Cllr. Verdier:

Please accept my warmest compliments for your nomination by the President of Liberia and

your subsequent confirmation by the Senate to the Executive Chairmanship of the Liberia

Anti-Corruption Commission, a position that in my opinion carries along the delicate

responsibility or potential of finally making or breaking Liberia.

By way of introduction, I am Roland S. Kartee, a concerned citizen and a member of the

Liberia petroleum Refining Company (LPRC) family, although currently at cross purposes

with my company‟s authorities.

Being aware of the fact that there is no hard and fast rule about when, or under what

conditions, a responsible citizen can fearlessly decide to rise up to the challenge of erecting

check points for certain negative activities within his/her society or governance structure, I am

honored to use my current situation to bring my company‟s entire leadership (Management

and Board of Directors) to the spot for the level of wanton misapplication, waste and

pillaging of our nation’s financial, human and other resources; the willful breach (or

actions to facilitate breach) of corporate policies and internal controls, the dubious and

criminal administration of the company; the unspeakable exposure of the company,

government, and country at large, to public disrepute; and the reckless abuse and misuse of

power, influence and authority etc., all backed either implicitly or explicitly by the Board of

Directors.

Kindly bear with me for the strange length, breadth, and style of presentation for this formal

complaint/report. It may not appear conventional or the normal way a report of this subject

should appear, but I am constrained to present it this way because I do not think we are living

in normal times; I instead think that we are in an unannounced, silent, but very destructive war

fare, and that I see myself as a key „military commander‟ at this battle front, as the mood,

narrations, and experiences etc. presented in the rest of this work will demonstrate to you; so

please follow these detailed narrations with very keen national interest.

My conscience is terribly suffocated to find myself remaining mute, mincing words, or only

pursuing my personal or family interest at this critical moment, when I am quite conscious that

all these vices listed above are gravely exerting a negative impact on our overall national

survival, growth and prosperity, and continuously imposing our country on the international

community as a complete liability and an enduring embarrassment. With your interest and

cooperation, LACC, I am prepared to sacrifice blood, sweat and tears as I have started for

some good bit of time now, to substantiate to the letter, all, or even more than the number of

claims made above, against the current LPRC leadership, with a determination to use this one

scenario, God willing, to begin the process that will spark the right kinds of reforms we need

now to change our country around for the better. I am prepared to stand in any open court of

competent jurisdiction against LPRC on behalf of the poor masses of this country in an effort

to put a check to these bad practices because of my strong conviction that we, who are a bit

privileged and opportune among millions, in a highly handicapped society like ours, are

unfortunately not Eating, Sleeping, and Breathing our country, a mishap I think is

responsible for why our country continues to go down the drain as we see it going today. In

the words of the Greek Philosopher Plato, which I always reference,” Excess generally causes

reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in

individuals, or in governments.” The way I see LPRC proceeding with business, if this is how

Liberia‟s other numerous revenue generating agencies and/or fund raising institutions are

going about things (which is what the news talks about every time), then no wonder why our

country tends to remain on the side of begging for loans, grants and other forms of largesse

until hell freezes over; and why our governments will keep failing miserably on almost all of

their promises to improve the lives of their own people. This is a war, called

„CORRUPTION‟ THAT HAS BEEN WAGED AGAINST all peace-loving and productive

people. CORRUPTION has been from the very beginning of this Liberia, and continues

unabated as the principal reason why majority of us are just Existing Rather Than Living, in

this country; the reason why, just in 24 years, according to an unofficial tally from my

personal research conducted, over Thirty Four Billion US Dollars (US$34 billion) have been

lost from the coffers of the international community and Liberia‟s own wealth, to the effects of

war and the search for peace and reconciliation, which are still illusive despite the fact that

they form part of all of our politicians‟ daily speeches, and command a good fraction of our

yearly budgets; the reason why, in 23 years, Liberia‟s leaders sat in about 21 different

internationally-organized peace accords and conferences (each of which cost multiple millions

of US DOLLARS ) just discussing how to share ministries and government agencies among

themselves based upon which of these institutions generated more revenues according to their

own readings; the reason why, although a mere robot, Kirobo, now executes, in space,

assignments given to it by its Japanese human superior, Mr. Koichi Wakata, and this robot is

talking in clear speech, in conversation with its human superior, processing questions and

constructing answers from his vocabulary, taking photographs and sending messages to twitter

etc. according to Wikipedia.org, Liberia is still decrying a messy national primary education

program (let alone the mess at the secondary and tertiary levels); the reason why, although

the Deep Learning Revolution in Information Technology has now made it possible for a

computer to recognize the voice of cat and call it a cat, according to the British Broadcasting

Corporation’s Science and Technology Program, more than 95% of Liberians STILL HAVE

NO ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY (Liberia’s Finance Ministry’s 2013 Report) and more than

98% of Liberians HAVE NO ACCESS TO THE INTERNET (according to the US

Department of State); the reason why, although many parts of the world are now looking

beyond the use of double-decker, 4, 5, 6, and even 7 lane modern roads/streets, and

contemplating the design of triple-decker roads/streets, ONLY about [a questionable ] 45%,

according to a Ministry of Finance 2013 Report, of households in Liberia have access to an

all-seasons road within ONLY 5 kilo meters, and much of the country‟s interior is cut off

from its [so-called] capital city during the rainy season, after 192 years of existence; the

reason why, although US Four Billion Nine Hundred Million Dollars (US$4.9 billion) of loan

money, used by its former leaderships to, in their words, develop the country (but they could

not pay back), was waived completely by the international community in the year 2010, key

human development indices still carry the embarrassing facts that Liberia, a 43,000 square

mile country, ONLY contains about a mere 500 miles of [inferior quality, 1 to 2 lane] paved

roads and more than 85% of its people still live on less than $1.00 a day; the reason why,

although the country has never been able to ever, since its existence convincingly and

independently, raise up to Five Hundred Million US Dollars(US$500 million) in revenue in

any of its annual budgets, Liberia, according a Media Consultant at the Ministry of Finance on

a local radio talk show in September of 2013, consumes over Four Hundred Million US

Dollars (US$400 million) in recurrent expenses annually, meaning, when contingencies and

provisions for „negligible‟ debt payments are considered, which is a matter of must, the

country is NEVER, EVER, left with anything for investment into capital projects

independently; the reason why, although Liberia has established, and is funding all of the

expensive anti-corruption and transparency & accountability enhancement institutions like the

General Auditing Commission GAC, the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission, LACC, the

Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, LEITI etc., the country, just in 3 years,

interestingly won twice, the disgraceful and notorious title of the world‟s most corrupt country

on a planet that hosts over 200 independent countries and autonomous territories (2010 and

2013) according German-based Transparency International; the reason why, although

Liberia has only 17 ethnic groups, a survey report from the Harvard Institute of Economic

Research‟s work done in 2002 and featured in the Washington Post designated Liberia as the

second most ETHNICALLY DIVERSED COUNTRY on Planet Earth (according to

http://rupertsimons.org) over such countries as Nigeria, for example, with over 250 ethnic

groups, and Papua New Guinea etc., with over 850 ethnic groups; the reason why, although

Liberia had its first democratic elections 167 years ago, September 27, 1847, according to

Joseph Saye Guannu’s “Liberian History up to 1847”, and since then used to go to the polls in

General & Presidential Elections every 2 years, then every 4 years, and to date, every 6 years,

the country‟s democracy is still being described deceitfully, sycophantically, and shamelessly

today as „immature‟, „premature‟, „underage‟, fragile, young, fledging etc. instead of

facing the fact, calling spade a spade, and declaring this poor, old, West African country as a

complete failed state, as implied by the Fund for Peace’s Foreign Policy Magazine’s Failed

State Tracking for 2013, which put Liberia critically high at 95.1 marks in failure [one would

safely say 4.9 marks in success] according to www.concordtimes.net.

When states fail in such a grotesque manner as ours, it calls for everyone‟s honest and selfless

efforts to completely dismantle (through civic and legal means) the old structure that in our

case was built on the foundation blocks of CORRUPTION and its accomplices of extreme

greed, deceit, cruelty, ethnic prejudice, dishonesty, parochialism, bigotry, unspeakable

marginalization etc. and rebuild a new and better one on the promising and ever strong and

dependable foundation blocks of HONESTY, with its disciples of righteousness (good moral

justifications for actions), fair play, unconditional justice, accountability (not the Liberia‟s

accountability that focuses only of figures, again poorly, but accountability that is applicable

to all of people‟s actions, past and present), and hard work etc. This is our biggest collective

challenge today as a people, and we must start confronting it from somewhere right now.

These are just a few of the very numerous reasons why I am so passionate to get everyone

involved as much as possible here in trying to wage a winning counterattack against this Old,

Giant, National Threat, called CORRUPTION, that is terribly defeating our country year after

year and day after day. I care to include most of our international partners also because these

are the people who continue to sacrifice their blood and meager material resources in rushing

to our aid each time we childishly and disgracefully mess things up for ourselves, as we have

started doing again, as old as this country is, and hard to learn.

With that said, I would now like to outline a couple of instances or specific details relating to

each of the general claims made above, for which the authorities at LPRC need to be

investigated now. I will also be providing you additional documents and sufficient pieces of

prima facie evidence against these and other claims that may arise based upon your scope and

interest. As I stand prepared to cooperate to any extent possible and at every level of these

investigations, it is my urge that based upon the interest that you will derive from the initial

analysis of the facts presented thus far, you kindly request the President of Liberia to relieve

these people of their respective current positions before we all delve into the substantives of

these very grave issues because I will never want to be part of any process that will just be

„bearding lions in their dens.‟ For keeping these people in authority while investigations into

these very serious issues ensue will be more like fighting a losing battle in this Liberia

according to my convictions. Below are categorized case by case narratives for your

investigation:

I. WANTON MISAPPLICATION, WASTE, AND PILLAGE OF OUR

NATION‟S FINANCIAL, HUMAN AND OTHER RESOURCES

1. When Mr. Harry A. Greaves took over the helm of leadership at LPRC in 2006, the

company had a bloated payroll of 650 employees, 16 functional departments, and 6

management layers. (LPRC times: August – October, 2008). Note, LPRC Times is a

corporate periodical. In his first 150 days, Mr. Greaves instituted a massive restructure

scheme in line with government‟s platform of creating lean and efficient institutions. At the

close of his first 6 months, in concert with experts from the USAID‟S GEMAP program,

Greaves had made redundant 415 employees, reduced the number of departments from 16

to 6 and slashed management layers from 6 to 3, among others. The company was now

right-sized with 235 employees, 6 departments, and 3 management layers, ready to face the

future. Because of government‟s sensitivity at the time, the redundancy program was

crafted with handsome severance benefits to empower affected employees to now venture

into the private sector or make ends meet at other fronts. As such, US$1.5 million was

spent exclusively to settle severance benefits, apart from other obvious peripheral expenses

associated with this scheme.

With all this knowledge, after having served as Deputy to Mr. Greaves, when Mr. Thomas

Nelson Williams, current Managing Director, took over LPRC in 2009, he embarked upon

his part of corporate restructure exercise in 2010, just 31/2 to 4 years after that of his former

boss. Payments, as such, against Mr. Williams‟ restructure activities started in early 2011,

and his part of management consultancy firm is called Subah Belleh Associates. By the

close of 2011, Mr. Williams had expended a record One Hundred Five Thousand United

States Dollars (US$105,000.00) restructuring LPRC “again” or re-restructuring” the

company. Here is a break-down of the payments he made to the Subah Belleh Associates:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 March 22, 2011 PV – 12284 30,000 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 May 3, 2011 PV – 12876 30,000 “

3 Nov. 11, 2011 PV – 15661 15,000 “

4 Nov. 15, 2011 PV – 15677 30,00 “

TOTAL 105,000

Please check up management‟s confirmation of this exercise and the payments made to Subah

Belleh Associates in the Concords Times Newspaper’s Wednesday, April 17, 2013’s article

“Trend of Vicious Lies and Gossip Abhorred.” You could specifically read paragraphs 7, 8, 9

and 10, second column of page 4.

At the close of Mr. Williams and his Board‟s expensive restructuring exercise, that unlike that

of Mr. Greaves‟ did not pay out any severance or related fees, a Harry Greaves lean and

efficient LPRC of 235 employees, 6 departments and 3 management layers now has over 300

employees, about 300 contractors, cadets and other casual workers, over 6 functional

departments, and 5 management layers.

Meanwhile, a terribly dilapidated storage facility embarrassingly decried by investors even

during Liberia‟s Civil War years still virtually remains the same since 11 years of stability

now, as the once described urgent rehabilitation works somewhat initiated by the Edwin

Melvin Snowe‟s Management around 2004 or 2005 has not yet been consummated. After a

spade of expensive and wasteful contract cancellations by each new management team, the

final 36- months urgent rehabilitation contract signed by the Williams management in October

2010 has not, as yet, convincingly crossed its halfway mark; and LPRC, this age and time,

still remains a mere storage facility for Lebanese and other business men. LPRC, or as I would

safely call it, LPSC (Liberia Petroleum Storage Company) has not as yet been able to start

importing finished product for her own sales activities, let alone to begin preparing for

elementary refining activities, when Liberia has already auctioned out 10 oil blocks for

exploitation. The current storage capacity of LPRC during these rehabilitation works is a mere

43,000 Metric Tons provided from 14 product storage tanks, with storage capacity expected to

increase to around 75,000 Metric Tons upon completion of the rehabilitation works. LPRC‟s

single biggest revenue contribution ever to government in this entire 21st century is a 2013‟s

contribution (that has not even been paid totally yet) of US$4.3 million, when according to a

BBC business day online, March 2009 report on our next door neighbor and conflict victim,

Ivory Coast‟s Oil Refinery Activities indicates that SIR (Societé Iviorrenne de Rafinage), as

of the year 2006, had 100 combined storage tanks; a storage capacity of over 1.5 million

Metric Tons; produced over 1 billion gallons of refined products per annum and was reporting

annual profits after taxes of CFA 1 Trillion 73 million or its US Dollar equivalent of around

$2.2+ billion. To date, SIR‟s capacities have increased and Ivory Coast now has a second oil

refinery with a slightly lesser capacity than SIR as suggested by this same BBC report; when

the country has not even, or at least up to the date of the report, had not even formally

discovered oil yet, let alone auctioned out 10 oil blocks like carefree Liberia. From this BBC

Report, one can deduce why Liberia is poised never to be able, ever, to construct

independently for herself a 100 mile asphalt road with this current business practice, mind set,

and economic and political status quo.

2. MD Williams and his cohorts are in the habit of devising all sorts of clever schemes to

pillage the company‟s resources. At LPRC, one sensitive revenue generating tool is called

the truck loading order (TLO), a ticket used at the meter to load products into container

trucks. Because of their sensitivity and importance to income generation, we normally

purchase TLOs in huge quantities and keep supplies in stock readily. But at the same time,

the high significance of these tickets adds to their vulnerability of being used by illicit

wealth-seeking corporate executives, as requests for TLOs can be quickly acted upon,

especially from the top. It was clear to Procurement and other authorities at LPRC, that by

late 2010, there were still enough supplies of these tickets in stock that could even take the

company for more than two years. But MD Williams and his Comptroller (Miss Elizabeth

M. Tubman), for their own selfish motives, still chose to authorize the purchase of 10

additional boxes of TLOs. The total cost attributed to these 10 boxes by the duo was

Ninety Five Thousand Three Hundred United States Dollars (US$95,300), paid to a vendor

called Crown Graphics in three installments as follows:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 Nov. 3, 2010 PV – 10651 45,900 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 Jan.17 2011 PV – 11252 3,500 “

3 May 5, 2011 PV – 12889 45,900 “

TOTAL 95,300

The painful story is that after all these payments; some fake papers called TLOs were brought

to the office that could not work with the system. MD Williams and his team, as of last year,

2013, said they were still working with their vendor, Crown Graphics to resolve the problem.

But to even add insult to injury, this same MD Williams authorized the Procurement Officer (a

handsome, young, married man and very closed confident of the MD) and the Comptroller (a

cantankerous old spinster, who is sometimes a bit critical of the MD‟s spending habits, and a

woman always boasting of her special connection with President Sirleaf) to travel to Beirut,

Lebanon, to, in the words of management, “perform due diligence on a new factory that is

supposed to start printing TLOs for LPRC. The pair was honestly bulldozed onto this trip, but

cleverly, as they attempted twice on this one trip. During the first attempt, they stopped in

Accra, Ghana, and came back to Monrovia due to what they described as news of disturbances

coming from Beirut. In a few weeks, they got signal that Beirut was ok, so they took off for

the second attempt which was successful. All this was happening around October and

November of 2012. I was only privileged to have gotten across two payment accounts against

the pair‟s Beirut plane ticket as follows:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 Oct. 5, 2012 PV – 19192 2,095 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 Oct. 30, 2012 PV – 19191 2,585 “

TOTAL 4,680

As most of their operations of this kind are done covertly, it was only a whistleblower who

later revealed that the pair had used a staggering Three Hundred Thousand United States

Dollars (US$300,000) on their TLO expedition in Beirut, Lebanon. My claim of the

management breeding COLLUSION from the onset of this letter stems from developments

surrounding this Beirut trip. Since their return, it is an open secret at LPRC that the

Procurement Officer now called Assistant Procurement Manager and the Comptroller are now

alleged illicit lovers – A Very Big Threat To All Financial Internal Controls. For more

details on this count, I am pleased to refer you to the New Democrat, Tuesday, March 19, 2013

edition, paragraph 6 of the left most column on page 4, and the Wednesday, April 17, 2013

edition of the Concord Times Newspaper, paragraph 6 of the right-most column on page 5.

3. Sorry for the extensive explanations and references here, but please bear with me that this

is a revolutionary work, intended to impact an old, chronic situation at all costs, God

willing.

Joseph B. Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostle compared life to a marathon race

and insinuated that people who find themselves lagging behind in this running race need to

exert a much more aggressive effort than those already ahead, in an attempt to “catch” pace

with those ahead, if at all those trailing behind will ever want to be counted among

successful people. Then Joseph Persico in his blog post entitled “Making Up For Lost

Time”, added flavor to this admonishment above when he said among other things, “The

fact remains that the clock keeps ticking and ticking, and minutes, hours, days, weeks,

months and years keep moving without our control, with each time unit being lost forever.

There is no guarantee in life, and if we choose to waste time, or unnecessarily lose time,

perhaps we will never be able to make up for it, as it might be too late when we finally

realize our mistakes and ask ourselves why….We only will be left with regrets about what

we could have done had we come to ourselves earlier …. Nevertheless, if we have lost

time, then we need to do our utmost best to redeem it. And as people say with money, we

need not to throw anymore good money after bad or worthless things. Similarly, we need

not throw anymore good time after worthless pursuits or trivial things. Finally, if we follow

these principles, and live each day the best we can, we will be able to put behind that

unproductive lost time and perhaps even forget those ugly memories some day.”

This food for thought ushers us into the actual count #3 of our case. LPRC, with the major

priorities confronting it, in terms of the direly needed activities to help boost its revenue

generating capacity; like for example, rapidly improving the plant facility, pumping money

into process (es) that will lead to importing finished products for its own sale activities instead

of merely surviving on storage fees etc, took onto another glaring money eating scheme again.

In the year 2012, MD Williams and his cohorts embarked on an „ambitious‟ corporate

rebranding exercise. By September 12, 2012, a record total of US Thirty One Thousand Eight

Hundred Ten Dollars (US$31,810.00) had been expended by the LPRC authorities to rebrand

the company, and the activities in this exercise were as follows: print new complimentary

cards for senior management; print new t-shirts for employees, call the company’s first MD

Hon. Cletus Wortorson for an open-air one hour honoring program, and change the

company’s logo that no one had ever complained about. At the close of the rebranding

exercise, after expending US$31,810, the only legacy of this money spent could probably be

the changed logo, but the complimentary cards became virtually useless in less than two

months, as almost 98% of those for whom they were printed were demoted in management‟s

controversial vertical integration exercise (although they called it a mere title change), and the

content of the huge billboard was discarded during the same two months period. Money

actually grows on trees in Liberia. The US$31,810 was disbursed as follows, when

government has embarrassingly failed for the third year running to create even 5% of the

20,000 jobs per annum for our growing number of both skilled and unskilled labor force as

promised by the President:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 Aug. 17, 2012 PV – 8708 6,400 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 Aug.22, 2012 PV – 18803 4,750 “

3 Aug.23, 2012 PV – 18850 2,660 “

4 Aug. 30, 2012 INV – 5001 15,500 *The payment against this invoice will be

checked later, but pmt was made definitely

5 Sept. 12, 2012 PV – 18967 2,500 “

TOTAL 31,810

4. At an elaborate management retreat we held in the township of Marshall in early

November of 2011 using Thousands of US Dollars of corporate funds, among other things,

two major issues were brought up, and based upon the significance of these two issues, two

top management members were designated forthwith to begin implementation of the first

issue and to conduct feasibility studies on the second issue with time frames of one to two

years to complete these tasks. But sadly up to this 2014, we see no results as yet with

respect to these two issues; meaning, they were just another tactical lip service or another

form of Liberia‟s “business as usual”. The two issues were the construction of a new

administrative office building for employees to move into by year end 2013, and Mr.

Williams was designated to spearhead this; while, the next issue was that LPRC should

begin importing finished product for sale by the same year end 2013, and Mr. Jackson Doe

was selected to head this project or its feasibility studies and make speedy report.

a) The current LPRC PST (Product Storage Terminal) facility on the Bushrod Island was

originally intended to only host one of the company‟s many departments, the

Operations Department, and a few of LPRC‟s business partners such as the inspectors,

importers etc, and it was the Liberian Civil Conflict that brought all of the staff together

at this single, tight location. But 11 years after the end of this conflict, all seven of the

company‟s functional departments, including other semi-autonomous sections

constituting a workforce of over 300 employees, and almost the same number of

contractors, cadets and other casual laborers still come together every morning at PST

for work. To add to this embarrassment, each category of the company‟s business

partners does have an office, or at least a place to work from, at the PST. Far beyond

prewar numbers, there are now more than nine petroleum importing firms, over eleven

petroleum distributing firms, all of which work as independent groups from within the

PST compound, apart from the independent inspectors, Ministry of Finance‟ Customs

Officers etc. By 2010, it had become so embarrassing that some LPRC employees go to

work without a desk to sit behind, and even those with desks or office space experience

very minimum personal flow state as an obvious result of over-crowdedness, noise etc.

At Marshall, we at the retreat resolved to call it quits with this situation immediately.

Based upon this resolution, One Hundred Seventy Thousand Five Hundred US Dollars

(US$170,500) was disbursed from the company‟s coffers between June and September,

2012 for the purchase of land to commence construction of an office building. Up to

this date, no one knows where the land is located and LPRC PST compound still

remains a “clustered box of matches”. The US$170,500 was disbursed as follows:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 June 28, 2012 PV – 15430 500 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 Aug. 8, 2012 PV – 18631 42, 500 “

3 Setp.18, 2012 PV – 18993 127,500 “

TOTAL 170,500

b) LPRC was established in 1978 pursuant to the Liberian Business Corporation Act to

carry on the business of Producing, Refining, Storing, Supplying and Distributing

petroleum products throughout the length and breadth of Liberia. Further, in 1989, a

Legislative Act was approved and published in July, granting LPRC exclusive rights for

the Importation, Sale, and Distribution of petroleum and petroleum products within

Liberia. Although the company was also given the right under this Act to designate or

appoint agents to execute any of these functions, I still think its role should not

perpetually be restricted to mere storage, as the case currently is, with shamefully no

sign of changing this situation right away. To put this disparaging situation to rest, at

the Marshall Retreat of 2011, we instructed Mr. Jackson Doe, DMD/A to do the

feasibility studies for this possible importation jumpstart project and make all of the

recommendations that will lead us to getting the show on the road by year end 2013.

Certain information are considered highly privileged at LPRC, so probably Mr. Doe‟s

feasibility study‟s report has fallen into this category, as we have not heard any thing as

yet about this worthwhile project, and LPRC continues to remain a “glorified” gas

station, and even worse than this description because LPRC doesn‟t even sell gas. But

the interesting suspicion surrounding management‟s continuous tight lips about this

importation issue is that there is news that top management members are allegedly in

the business of receiving bribes from business partners (Lebanese and others) to keep

conditions in these business people‟s favor. There is news that LPRC‟s top

management allegedly inflates certain refundable losses we call demurrage in favor of

the importers so as to be able to get their share while helping the business people to

make a killing on the backs of the poor and suffering Liberian people. A whistleblower

account of this demurrage inflation allegation can be found in the New Democrat,

Tuesday, March 19, 2013, page 4, last paragraph of the left most column and first

paragraph of the 3rd column from left to right, with LPRC’s flimsy denial in the

Concord Times Newspaper edition of Wednesday, April 17, 2013, page 4, paragraphs

14 – 19 of the second column. What is even more troubling about these denials is the

incredible level of insincerity of the LPRC leadership, people who have consistently

proven to be dishonest in very little things. According to German born Theoretical

Physicist Albert Einstein, “Anyone who does not take truth seriously in small matters

can NEVER be trusted in large ones either.”

A country and people in a race against time can never succeed by proceeding this way.

THIS LIBERIAN PUBLIC SECTOR IS TOO MESSY; IT KEEPS HEADING

TOWARDS UNMITIGATED DISASTER WITH EACH NEW ADMINISTRATION.

IT NEEDS A COMPLETE OVERHAUL NOW, THERE’S NO TWO WAYS ABOUT

THIS!!!

II. THE DUBIOUS AND CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE

COMPANY

1. If Mr. Williams and his lieutenants were smart enough to have sensed the potential

legal risks their appointer (the President, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) faces for the

economically imprudent way in which she and her Thomas Nelson Williams

management are running a major revenue generating arm of government like LPRC,

they would not have exacerbated the situation by the criminal way in which they have

been proceeding with the direly required rehabilitation need of the company. LPRC‟s

1960s facilities have been dilapidated since the 1990s. Petroleum importers and other

business partners started decrying the poor state of these facilities even during the heat

of Liberia‟s Civil War, with some of them threatening to stop bringing their products to

Liberia. This situation pushed the Edwin Snowe Management of 2003 to 2006 to

hurriedly enter into a US$12 million contract for the urgent rehabilitation of the plant

with a Lebanese engineering firm, the Mechanical Engineering Group (MEG). As

everyone knows, signing and sealing huge international deals like these can be very

expensive and time consuming, taking into account all of the peripheral costs before the

deals become done and dusted. Unfortunately, all these realities were ignored, and

when Mr. Harry Greaves took over in 2006, this MEG contract was nullified on

grounds that its scope was inadequate among other claims. (LPRC Times; August –

October 2008). Mr. Greaves used over US Five Hundred Thousand Dollars

(US$500,000) to initiate a new contract; again, for the urgent rehabilitation of this

looming danger, the LPRC facilities. Payment records of almost every peripheral

expenses surrounding this new Greaves secured US$24.7 million PST rehabilitation

contract with Zakhem International Construction Ltd of the UK, which include various

payments for consultancy services, various payments for press and contract awards

publicities, plus an initial payment of US$500,000 to Zakhem International are in my

possession. Our president, with the consent of the Legislature, was reported to have

helped nullify this contract after all these expenses, when it has been very difficult, if

not totally impossible, for Liberia to ever nullify many faulty oil contracts, even if the

faults are glaring to a 2 year-old child. Indeed, money really burns a hole in

Liberia‟s coffers. (Daily observer, Monday, September 7, 2009).

I am sorry for our struggling citizens in school; I worry where the opportunities will

come from for them to get a job to do when the current public officials are so careless

with the use of our resources like this.

This Greaves‟ initiated 36 months rehabilitation contract was signed and sealed on May

1, 2009 and was ready for physical work in October of 2009, and an aggressive and

more result-oriented Harry Greaves had already assured his employees and the public

of a well rehabilitated and new LPRC PST by year end 2013. I say this with emphasis

because I have known Mr. Greaves all along as a man that means business and a man of

his words.

Mr. Williams, a national leader, cognizant of these embarrassing economic wastes and

a show of grave unseriousness by our country „s top decision makers, took over the

mantle of authority in September of 2009, and by October 22, 2010, had struck his part

of 36 month, urgent LPRC rehabilitation contract with another UK-based company,

Motherwell Bridge Ltd. for a purported US$22 million in a contract document that was

only meant for a very privileged few in top management and probably some angels

from heaven for the level of its secrecy. Fortunately, one of the chairmen of the Board

of Directors, Cllr. Negbalee Warner, (mid 2011 to very early 2012), got confronted

with this situation and lamented the shadiness of this very opaque deal in a FrontPage

Africa Article, pointing out among other things, the following:

The contract actually had no definite price (meaning any figure could be infused in

there at any time).

The contact was signed October 22, 2010; Cllr. Warner assumed the Board‟s

Chairmanship of LPRC around July of 2011after the dismissal by President Sirleaf of

Professor Wilson Tarpeh early July 2011. Cllr. Warner was in this position for about 7

months, between July 2011 and January 2012. According to the Councilor, it was

during almost the close of his tenure, more than a year after the October 22, 2010

signing that MD Williams brought to his (Cllr. Warner and by extension any LPRC

Board‟s attention for that matter) for the very first time, an instrument that Mr.

Williams called an “Amendment of the PST Contract,” according to which LPRC

assumes all tax obligations of Motherwell Bridge Ltd as well as other dues, fees and

charges ought to be paid by this foreign company to the Liberian Government.

The „killer‟ news is that the amendment and the main contract bear the same date,

October 22, 2010, according to the Councilor.

Cllr. Warner, overwhelmed by this, and many other acts of gross dishonesty on the part

of the MD Williams Management, tendered in his resignation in January 2012, barely 7

months after assuming such a lucrative position. Please read FrontPage Africa,

Monday, February 13, 2012 and Daily Observer, Thursday, February 16, 2012 editions

for more details.

One deep concern I have had about all this all along, is time. This 36 months urgent

rehabilitation contract, signed on October 22, 2010, was strangely started after almost a

year and a half, April 2012. I am attaching here a communication to this effect.

Moreover, the rehabilitated and new LPRC PST that we employees and passionate

nationalists were assured of by Mr. Harry Greaves to be available by year end 2013 is

now being promised by Mr. Williams and his Motherwell counterparts to be ready

between mid 2015 and early 2016; meaning, in Madam Sirleaf‟s and MD Williams‟

own sweet time. Meanwhile, almost 10 years have gone by now since Mr. Snowe

entered into the first contract for the urgent rehabilitation of this 1990s‟ pronounced

dilapidated plant, and 8 years have gone into the administration of Liberia‟s most

“Economics-trained” President, Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The question remains,

what good examples of time and resource management have our national leaders

exhibited in this scenario for young people to emulate?

2. The LPRC leadership did bring disgrace to our country at the handling of a Japanese

Oil grant given to the government and suffering masses of Liberia in 2011. The actions

of this current LPRC leadership in this deal have both led to the continuous suffering of

a vast majority of Monrovians living and doing business along the entire Somalia Drive

route and have also implicitly made the Government and People of Japan to start

looking down upon us, Liberians.

Between August and September of 2011, the Government and People of Japan gave

Liberia a simple business test in the form of a grant, and this test fell in the laps of MD

William‟s LPRC. Japan gave 15,000 Metric Tons of mixed petroleum products that they

had used US$ 13 million of their tax payers‟ money to purchase for Liberia. Because this

was a business test in disguise, the Japanese and Liberian Governments went into a

memorandum of understanding (MOU) about how the sale of these products should go.

They also jointly opened an escrow account at the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL) where

proceeds from this deal should be deposited. The sincerity test, and thus, the business trick

here was that, LPRC, the entity handling the grant was given a threshold targeted deposit

of US$8.5 million. In the layman business sense, Japan was telling LPRC, no matter how

bad business went, you should not report less than US$8.5 million out of this US$13

million oil we purchased and gave to your country. Japan had planned to continue with

more of these kinds of grants based upon Liberia‟s performance with this first one.

Shamefully and naively, in no time, LPRC used Aminata & Sons to sell the products and

she (LPRC) quickly deposited the exact threshold amount of US$8.5 million into the

escrow account at the CBL. She had other monies to pay, and other costs associated with

this transaction as it is normal with all business transactions, but when LPRC presented the

breakdown of all the costs incurred, including other monies paid to stakeholders, including

the US$8.5 million deposited, her total earnings from the transaction did not still

breakeven with the Japanese principal of US$13 million. It fell short of the actual principal

by US$1.6 million. These kinds of national embarrassments are not to be taken lightly.

This was a show of cruel rapaciousness on the part of the LPRC leadership; it was

shameful and criminal. What they did here was a complete mortgaging of Liberia‟s future

opportunities with Japan, just because Mr. Williams and his cohorts have to live far above

the standards of fellow Liberians at the expense of the poor citizens.

I wish they knew the secret behind a businessman and his concept of breakeven, whether or

not he was testing, joking or giving a free gift to his subject; and what free gift, like in this

case, would ever come with all these conditions and monitoring mechanisms attached? To

get a gist of what the LPRC leadership privately and criminally benefited from these

transactions unofficially or roughly, let‟s look at this analysis:

The products given by Japan were mainly PMS (Premium Motor Spirit) and AGO

(Automobile Gas Oil). An amateur conversion index of these products from Metric Tons to

gallons is 1 Metric Ton of PMS =350 gallons and 1 Metric Ton of AGO=305 gallons,

taking an average of these two would mean 327.5 or 328 gallons. When we multiply this

average by Japan‟s 15,000 MTs, we would be talking about 4,920,000 gallons of mixed

products. LPRC however gave some excuses and said that they received 12,472 Metric

Tons in total (Daily Observer, Thursday, February 16, 2012), then later they said they

received 12,404.041 MTs (the New Democrat; Friday, February 17, 2012). The press

however was able to track a total gallons receipt by LPRC of 4,196,343 (Daily Observer,

Thursday, February 16, 2012). Granted this figure, the wholesale price of these products at

the time were US$4.40 per gallon for PMS and US$4.55 per gallon for AGO. Taking the

average of these two at US$4.475 and multiplying this amount by 4,196,343 gallons

amounts to a total revenue generated by LPRC and her partner, Aminata & Sons of

Eighteen Million Seven Hundred Seventy Eight Thousand Six Hundred Thirty Four US

Dollars Ninety Three Cents (US$18,778,634.93) from the Japanese oil grant, holding all

things constant, but LPRC sales breakdown, including the US$8.5 million deposited into

the escrow account, only summed up to Eleven Million Three Hundred Sixty-Five

Thousand Six Hundred Ninety-Five Dollars and Sixty-Nine Cents (US$11,365,695.69)

(The New Democrat, Friday, February 17, 2012)

Issues surrounding this oil deal are also covered in the FrontPage Africa, Monday,

February 13, 2012 edition and the Thursday, February 16, 2013 edition of the Daily

Observer Newspaper. This translates into the fact that the LPRC Management still has a

little over US Seven Million Dollars (US$7.4 million) to account for, out of this

Japanese Oil Grant given to our country to help improve the lives of the poor people.

Our President, well informed about all these kinds of embarrassing acts by her

lieutenants, leaves the main issues, and was heard during her early February 2014‟s

appearance at a local intellectual center, Center for the Promotion of Intellectual

Development (CENPID), pointing fingers at peaceful Liberians, particularly the youths,

for spreading negative news about her administration.

Let us not forget that Japan was approached back then in 2009 by the Liberian

Government to rehabilitate a major street in Monrovia, the Somalia Drive (The

National Chronicle, January 30, 2012), something the Japanese agreed to do in

principle, that would cost their tax payers US$50 million. As said earlier, it was

moreover the intention of the Japanese to continue giving the Liberian people such oil

grant to boost our development process, according to the then LPRC Public Relations

Manager, Madam Nyonblee Karnga Lawrence. As we speak, it is this same Japan that

gives the hungry Liberian people through the GOL about US$400,000 worth of rice as

free food per year. Just very late 2013, the Japanese Ambassador to Liberia was heard

on tape at the Foreign Ministry in Monrovia dishing out US$5.1 million to the Liberian

people in extra food aid. This same Japan, instead of keep throwing us a bone, decides

to teach us how to fish, and a cruel and selfish LPRC Management decides to damage

this opportunity for ever. Further, Japan is currently using millions of US Dollars to

help resuscitate our hydro-plant at Mount Coffee, but I know by the time the project

gets completed and that enterprise gets up and running, corruption there would even be

worse than LPRC because Liberia has decided to succumb to this menace completely,

God forbids. WE WILL FIGHT IT WITH OUR ENTIRE LIVES HENCEFORTH,

GOD WILLING. When would a now disappointed and reluctant Japan come to start the

rehabilitation of our Somalia Drive? I don‟t think Liberians deserve all this hell at the

hands of a few cruel wealth-seeking people calling themselves national leaders, and our

time has come to act now!!!!

3. This LPRC Management demonstrated hyper greed, insensitivity, and serious lack of

moral rectitude in its handling of the out of court damage payments for the wrongful

death of a 2-year old child, little Marcus Larma, killed in an accident on August 25,

2010 by an LPRC vehicle, BC-1772, in the Chicken Soup Factory Community in

Gardnersville. The vehicle was being driven by one Patrick Flomo, an employed driver

with the company.

On September 2, 2010, Mr. Charles Larma and Madam Adama Barry, parents of little

Marcus Larma filed a lawsuit against LPRC to recover damages for the wrongful death

of their child. The LPRC Management, through its Board of Directors opted for an out

of court settlement with the parents of the deceased child in a Board Resolution dated

December 16, 2010. This out of court settlement was to be facilitated by Board

Member, Madam Nowai Gbilia, upon the Board‟s mandate because of Madam Gbilia‟s

professed influence over the late Marcus‟ parents. On this date, the Board adopted a

resolution approving the payment of US$30,000 as an out of court settlement to Mr.

Charles Larma and Madam Adama Barry for closure of this US$1.5 million wrongful

death case brought against the company. Still, this same Board resolution, referenced as

RES. No. BD/2010/035 also approved US$5,000 to Madam Gbilia as compensation to

spearhead negotiations with late Marcus‟ parents. (Special Investigative Report of the

Auditor General on the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company for Fiscal Year

2010/2011.)

On December 24, 2010, Mr. Williams mandated Ms. Elizabeth Tubman, the

Comptroller, to process the payment of US$30,000 in favor of Madam Adama Barry,

mother of the deceased, in the absence of Mr. Charles Larma, the father, and all of the

lawyers concerned. Meanwhile, Madam Gbilia had earlier purportedly informed the

Board that both parents would be at the signing and receiving of any money from this

compromise deal. The payment however went ahead on December 24, 2010, Christmas

Eve, to Madam Adama Barry alone on LBDI Check #:951377.

To put up maximum security for Madam Barry, especially also to help her in checking this

huge cash on x-mas eve, Mr. Williams instructed Board Member Madam Gbilia to escort and

help Madam Barry at the LBDI Bank; and in fact, apparently, Mr. Williams himself, so

interested in this payment owing to his humanitarian feelings for Adama, either followed, or

was closely monitoring what was happening before the LBDI teller booth that mournful x-mas

eve because he himself later claimed that the LBDI Bank Manager, Madam Gloria Menjor was

present when Madam Gbilia was disbursing the money to Adama, a claim Madam Menjor out

rightly denied. Interestingly, bereaved Adama claimed to have received US$17,900 of this

US$30,000; meaning, MD Williams and Madam Gbilia of the Board had probably rewarded

themselves a handsome x-mas treat of US$12,100 for their hard work and grave concern for

the little dead child and the fate of his parents. (Heritage Newspaper, August 28, 2013). On

January 24, 2011, one month after this payment to Madam Barry, MD Williams instructed

Comptroller Tubman to process payment of US$5,000 in favor of Madam Gbilia, the Board

Member, his „errand girl‟, and Honorable Mediator. The payment voucher was raised and

approved by both the Comptroller and the MD, and the payment acknowledged by Madam

Gbilia. This should have closed the entire tale about little Marcus‟ wrongful death and the

resulting out of court settlement with LPRC.

But because extreme greed and corruption render leaders reckless and absentminded, this was

just the beginning of little Marcus‟ wrongful death case after US$35,000 had already left the

company‟s coffers. Approximately ten months on, Cllr. Sayma Syrenius Cephas and Sylvester

Rennie, lawyers representing the deceased child‟s parents, requested a Notice of Assignment

from the Civil Law Court to proceed with the trial again. The lawyers proceeded to court; this

time around, to represent one of the deceased‟s parents, Mr. Charles Larma, on grounds that

the US$30,000 paid to Madam Adama Barry was without the knowledge of Mr. Charles

Larma and therefore not binding on him. The Board again, opted for an out of court settlement

of this same case for the second time, with an equal amount of US$30,000 awarded to the

father of the deceased.

On November 4, 2011, the Cllr. Warner Board adopted a resolution approving a payment of

US$30,000 to Mr. Larma on recommendations of the LPRC Board‟s Compliance Committee,

which the Board had earlier asked to intervene when the issue of the second out of court

payment came up. On November 17, 2011, Chairman Warner instructed MD Williams to

implement the Board‟s resolution and release a cheque of US$30,000 to Mr. Larma ONLY

after going through the formality of legally withdrawing the case from court. But interestingly,

on this same date, Mr. Williams instructed the Comptroller to process US$30,000 in favor of

Cllr. Witness Doryen, an employee of LPRC, contrary to the mandate of Cllr. Warner, for

onward payment to Mr. Charles Larma. This second US$30,000 was paid on an IBL

(International Bank Liberia Ltd) check for settlement to Mr. Larma. This information was also

contained on the customer transaction detail report of IBL for that date (although Mr. Larma

claimed to have only received US$6,000 out of this amount.

Now, here is the conclusion. The General Auditing Commission (GAC), after this work,

indicts LPRC as follows: “The conduct of the LPRC Board and Management in the handling

of the out of court arrangement was characterized by compliance deviations, resulting in a loss

of US$35,000.00 to the company. This loss of US$35,000.00 comprises the second payment

of US$30,000.00 to the father of the deceased child and the payment of US$5,000.00 to

Madam Gbilia of the Board. The Compliance Committee of the LPRC Board alluded to this as

procedural errors on the part of management in making the first out of court payment of the

US$30,000 to Madam Adama Barry. The separate claims made by Madam Adama Barry and

Mr. Charles Larma that they received US$17,9000 and US$6,000 respectively, portrayed

mistrust and dishonesty on the part of the LPRC Management and their parties that

participated in the out of court settlement. Officer Bill S. Thomas of the Liberia National

Police (LNP) who witnessed the first out of court receipt was interviewed by the Special

Financial Investigation Team of the GAC and he confirmed Adama‟s claim of receiving

US$17,900 out of the intended US30, 000.” (Heritage Newspaper, August 28, 2013).

According to the LPRC Management, it agrees that certain procedural errors were made in

handling the out of court settlement, in that, according to them, “we now realize that at the

time of the payment of, or, prior to the payment to only one of the parents, Madam Adama

Barry, a Notice of Withdrawal should have been field by the complaining party, the parents, at

the court.” But the LPRC Management reiterated that the intent of this out of court

arrangement was to save the company US$1.2 million [not US$1.5 million again] (Heritage

Newspaper, September 2, 2013).

One day after this kind of ignominious confession, i.e. September 3, 2013, a naive and belly-

driven Public Relations Section of LPRC posts an article to www.gnnliberia.com, entitled “LPRC

Reacts To GAC Reports,” making further mockery of this grave situation as in the following

excerpts, “The management of LPRC is taken aback by the GAC report in which it was

queried for making payment of US$60,000 in an out of court settlement … The Board and

Management did inform the GAC on December 16, 2010 that the decision to authorize

payments was the result of its sympathetic feeling that surrounds the loss of life and the out of

court settlement was the most economical and less risky option….The Management and

Board, through its Compliance Committee in finalizing the out of court settlement did not in

any way engage in any fraudulent act as erroneously reported by the GAC. The amount of

US$60,000 paid as a result of the out of court settlement is insignificant to the staggering

amount of US$1.5 million of tax payers‟ money that would have been paid to the parents of

the deceased as a result of the lawsuit.” [it has now become US$1.5 million again, instead of

the US1.2 million claimed a day earlier in the Heritage Newspaper]

The comportment of the LPRC Management and its collaborators in their handling of this

deceased little child‟s issue establishes one of the major priorities „misorderings‟ my research

about this Liberia has discovered, which is the tendency of prioritizing religiosity over

righteousness (good moral justifications for our actions), a very sad mistake that only keeps

us running around in circles). If we change this priority around, even an atheist could do

great things for this country because righteousness will make us strongly obey the dictates of

our consciences first, before thinking about other pursuits. Just few days ago, for example,

February 7, 2014, British Immigration Minister Mark Harper had to willingly and

spontaneously resign his post, all because he had discovered that his domestic worker had

faked her documents to win an employment with him, something that was against a recent

immigrating legislation he had helped to engineer. Mr. Harper opined he should have been the

cleanest example. (www.theguardian.com, www.bbcnews.com)

All those major decision makers at the LPRC, at the level of the top management and the

Board are big religious players seeing themselves in a web of disgraceful and criminal

activities like these, but even at the point that these issues have come to light so broadly, none,

not even the immediate culprits will ever relinquish their positions gracefully, but almost all of

them claim to have American or Western lineages or connections. Dr. Herman Brown,

Chairman of the current Board is a Reverend at the Episcopal Church; Mr. Thomas Nelson

Williams is the President of the Men‟s Department of the Bethel World Outreach Ministries

Church; Board Member Emmanuel Bowier is reportedly a Reverend; Mr. Aaron J. Wheagar

(DMD/O) is said to be a Pastor in the Transea Bible Church; and Mr. Jackson Doe (DMD/A)

is a Prominent Member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the same denomination to

which I coincidentally belong etc.

But the workings and track records of MD Williams and his cohorts have ever since proven

that they are just a bunch of shrewd contrivers. Like the devil, their first line of expertise is

devising white lies and half truths. And they are progressing so cleverly with this. But let me

remind them about what one key writer says here. According to Criss Jami, “Just because

something isn‟t a lie, doesn‟t mean that it is not deceptive. A lair knows that he is a liar, but

one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.”

Sorry, I don‟t intend to be personal here, or judge anyone, but these issues should be boldly

presented because they are now in excess, terribly hampering ours, and our children‟s future.

We must deal with these issues root and branch, which will not be possible void of the major

players.

III. RECKLESS ABUSE OF POWER, AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE TO A

POINT THAT EXPOSES THE COMPANY, GOVERNMENT AND

ENTIRE NATION TO AN EXTREME PUBLIC DISREPUTE

1. On Friday, January 18, 2013, Mr. Williams and his deputies called into the LPRC

Training Hall all of the company‟s departmental and sectional managers, a group of

which I am a part. The message at that meeting was that top management was now

ready to implement a certain key provision of the Subah Balleh Associates‟ restructure

scheme; in their words, this provision calls for a title change for all existing managers.

Whether they were ignorant of the connotations of this item on their own strategic

management agenda, or they meant to be cleverly deceptive again is anyone‟s guess,

but the actual wordings of the two related provisions on their strategic management

agenda, which they did not even disclose to us in that meeting, are outlined below. On

the so-called 5 year strategic management agenda proposed by Subah Balleh Associates

(the management consultancy firm that had earned the US$105,000 from the LPRC

Management that we earlier mentioned), counts 4 and 7 respectively of “Vision 2011-

2016 General Objectives read thus:

4. “Implement a limited program of vertical integration and create and mobilize a

marketing or commercial function to support it…..”

7. “Rationalize the organizational structure, the workforce, and incentive regime…….”

(made available later at www.lrclib.com)

I am surmising here that these accounts were meant to be the bases for what they wanted to do,

but their vision, reasoning, understanding and professionalism got clouded by cruelty, deceit,

sinister selfish motives and ineptitude, so they were explaining totally different things in this

meeting. At one point, they said they had observed that the number of managers now at LPRC

had increased, and as such, they wanted to reduce the number to match the reality during

former MD „Lewis Brown‟s time.‟ At another point, they said they just wanted to change the

tittles from „Manager‟ to “Assistant Manager‟ but that everything else, including current

earnings would remain the same. So few of us became suspicious and thus critical of their

mixed explanations; including, the Human Resource Manager, Victor Badio, Training

Manager, Jayjay Duncan and me, the Business Applications Manager, Roland Kartee. Some of

our colleagues were proposing that the managers needed first an increase in their current

earnings before accepting such a title change; others said, it was prudent to pay off those who

would not want such title change their complete severance; while still some of us maintained

there was no need for any such H/R related tweak if it was not based on economic constraint

(s), as was confirmed by management. This is because our company was growing financially

strong year after year, after former MD Greaves had placed it, and left it, on a very aggressive

revenue generating trajectory, although we had been advocating more aggressive revenue

generating avenues to match overall national realities in non-related arguments to the issue at

stake here. An LPRC that Mr. Greaves met in 2006 with a bank balance of US Fifty Thousand

Dollars (US$50,000) and a debt burden of US2.2 million, was at the time of our January 18,

2013 meeting, earning over US$23 million in gross revenue, and that the argument that,

because during Lewis Brown‟s time, LPRC had around 5 or 6 managers, and so, it should go

back to „status quo‟ when we are in 2013 was just irrelevant, among other pitfalls in their

arguments. And my last question that disbursed the entire meeting, requested top management

to present or quote to us the part of their Subah Belleh document that explicitly targeted

managers for „demotion‟, since this document continued to remain at the time a „holy secret‟.

With this question unanswered, Mr. Williams right away signaled an excuse on grounds that

he had some urgent engagement elsewhere; requested a postponement of the meeting; and

instructed DMD/A Jackson F. Doe to work with the Managers Club‟s Authorities to organize a

new meeting at a later date, at which all these emerging sticky issues would be adequately

addressed and resolved. The rest is history.

When we got back to work the next week, instead of phoning the major stakeholders to

arrange our new meeting, MD Williams took Monday January 21, 2013, to device his evil

ploy against me, apparently angered by the developments from Friday‟s meeting. Tuesday,

January 22, 2013, he sent for me, but I was out for lunch; when I got back to the office and

attended to his summon, he was engaged with guests, so we could not meet. Wednesday

morning, the same week, when we got back to work, I was summoned right away by the Hon.

MD because we had this unfinished business. The MD then displayed to me an informal

personal loan agreement sheet between me and a woman he claimed to be his church mate,

and further threatened that I quickly liquidated the balance on that paper or else… I nodded in

agreement and left. Thursday, the same week, the MD called me to his office and confronted

me this time with a different issue. Mr. Williams now claimed that he had been receiving some

tip offs (I would say gossips because he‟s well known at LPRC for entertaining gossips) that I,

Roland Kartee had been using the company‟s name to do my private business at Cellcom

Communications, an allegation or observation from him I immediately refuted in the presence

of his other guest, one of our company‟s lawyers, Mr. Robert M. Beer, that I met him in a

chitchat with, when I entered earlier. The MD then tried to show me certain paper on his desk

(although I didn‟t quite see it) with records of a certain transaction I had authorized almost

four months back, September 2012, which was in his words, fishy because it did not have all

of the supporting vouchers/business documents attached, and he called the amount. I

immediately acknowledged the transaction, admitted that I had authorized it, but on an

expediency basis, and then requested that he gave me some time to get back and investigate

why the vendor had not come as yet to run after the other documents in formalizing this

transaction – a situation regularly experienced in the business world especially when vendors

and customers get used to one another. And even with the particular vendor in question,

Cellcom, and other institutions, there had been numerous transactions of such expedient nature

that were formalized later. In certain instances, urgent technical work or other dire need can

call for a good fate „temporary dodging‟ of some red tapes to come back later and settle out on

them – MD Williams and all of his lieutenants know that this has been a norm at LPRC by

precedence. But all that the Managing Director wanted to hear from me that Thursday

afternoon was an admission that I was the one who in fact authorized this transaction, all other

issues surrounding this authorization were none of this concerns, as this man was dug in his

heels to use this slightest perceived opportunity to ultimately destroy this bane of his life,

Roland Kartee. Friday, January 25, 2013, the same week, while I was thinking that when we

got back to work, I would now have the time to investigate my little 4-mouth old transaction, I

only saw the DMD/A, Mr. Jackson F. Doe and his Assistant, the Director of Administration,

Mr. Cornelius Miamen, marching into my office with a rashly prepared dismissal letter and

asking me out of the company‟s premises. The letter was so hastily prepared that the claim or

allegation made in it is so ambiguous; but worst of all, the dismissing authority or title was

misrepresented. Mr. Jackson F. Doe, Jr., the approving authority for all hires and fires at

LPRC bears the title Deputy Managing Director for Administration (DMD/A) and not

Deputy Director General For Administration (DDG/A), as presented in their so-called

dismissal letter given me, and so, this was the first and major point of the failure of their plot

against me. To even make my argument stronger, the dubious or fake title was signed unto, by

the title holder himself and not even a proxy. When I tried to flag these points, I was warned I

should leave respectfully or else the security forces were going to be called in. I left, and every

subsequent attempt I made since then to come back to work, knowing that I had a fake

document in my hand, and that my bosses were scammers, I got denied by the LPRC Security.

While home and asking God for what next to do, few workmates called, disclosing that a

couple of interventions were made by different employee groups, and that every top

management member they confronted told them that my situation was not any serious, but that

I should just write, even a single sentence of apology, and I would be back to work the next

day. This, though, was out of the question for me, and going to court too was not an option, for

the simple reasons that; firstly, the instrument used for the so- called dismissal was something

fake or inauthentic, that I would never lend credence to, ever; secondly; the issues that led to

this witch hunt-driven action needed a more critical and radical approach than a mere running

to court; and lastly, the reluctant and cowardly way in which such a glaringly flagrant

miscarriage of justice was greeted and approached by my superiors, and both my peers and

subordinates in a family of fellow employees and citizens, spoke volume of a major societal

problem with civic- awareness and civic-mindedness that needed an immediate attention now.

Some I consider big fishes would tell me, “Roland, we are taken aback by such an abrupt and

cruel action from our bosses, but what to do, that‟s the kind of society we find ourselves in.”

At this point, apart from going to court, which still was totally out, two other options at my

disposal were, in my opinion: (a) to embark on an unbending direct action that would demand

that I get reinstated because what‟s in my hand called a dismissal letter is fake. This would

have brought a quicker solution; or. (b) to take up a formal complaint/appeal process, and I

chose the latter based on a couple of reasons as follows:

Although embarking on a formal complaint/ appeal process meant lending some credence

to an inauthentic piece of instrument, it avoided initial confrontations; it preserved a

somewhat cordial relationship with my bosses turned detractors, which would afford me an

opportunity to gauge their levels of leadership and objectivity more; and that it further

provided me an opportunity to bring to their attention more respectfully that the dismissal

letter given me had a fundamental fault that I can never violate the dictates of my

conscience to compromise.

Engaging in this process, though a long row to hoe, but with my little civic education and

awareness, would help me to study my environment and society better, in terms of those

direly needed principles that we must try to inculcate into society now, despite the near

impossibility etc. It would also enable me to gauge, according to my own standards, the

level of principle-mindedness, objectivity and responsiveness of each stakeholder I

confront up the ladder in this general grievances settlement procedure, among other

experiences.

So I made up my mind to disengage from behind those big HP and DELL „whooming‟ server

computers and sink my teeth into this very cumbersome assignment that would eventually lead

me into adequately studying my company; studying my government, and then my entire

country. This was also a test to establish whether a fair or objective redress could ever, or

could easily, be received in this Liberia in the absence of money, or a sectional or fraternal

affiliation.

As provided by our LPRC employee handbook, I got the search for redress off the ground on

January 30, 2013, 5 days after the bogus dismissal action, with a formal complaint letter to the

Managing Director, Mr. Williams, and a complimentary copy to the Board Chairman, Rev. Dr.

Browne, as required. This search for justice, or even a simple recognition of the major ethical,

professional, human rights, or legal breaches that have occurred to me in this witch hunt and

other accompanying actions, have been on for a year now, and every rung of the ladder of this

complaint escalation process has now been either encountered or approached by me, up to the

office of the President, without any meaningful response as yet, as you will discover in the rest

of the narration below.

Interestingly, the enemy or major player I have seen or discovered all through this complaint

process is CORRUPTION, which appears in different forms, and a tendency to protect this

culture. The root cause discovered thus, far for this tendency, is the extreme desire that a very

vast majority of Liberians possess, that pushes us to always want to put

personal/family/group interest far above all else, no matter how the general good is

negatively affected and no matter how much damage or loss society suffers. In no productive

society, to the best of my practical or reading knowledge, have almost 95% of the leaders and

people tended to hate the truth as I see here in Liberia. This is our collective national disease

of the worst effect. This can change however, provided we begin dealing with the major

national issues root and branch right now.

Being a manager, and by extension a leader, I have learnt to employ the technique from this

quote of Paul Hawken, as a major formula in solving complex problems. According to Mr.

Hawken, “Good management is the art of making problems (especially an established

chronic national problem like ours, CORRUPTION) so interesting, and their solutions so

constructive, that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.” Determined to

apply this approach, and desirous of deriving greater benefit for society from this painful, but

interesting ordeal of mine, I decided to remain calm and unruffled in approaching every

provocative and tantalizing experience that has come my, and my very young family‟s way,

and continue to come our way, all through this long, boring journey. The physical,

psychological, and economic toll on us has also been tremendous. During this ordeal, and up

to present, my children have been out of school; we live at the mercy of our landlady now who

we owe Thousands Of Dollars in rental arrears and continue to beg on a daily basis, and I and

my fiancé‟s beautiful career paths have been brutally interrupted, but God continues to help us

remain steadfast and enduring, careful not to short circuit the desired big picture results

sought. Here are some of the tantalizing and provocative experiences encountered thus far,

which also have helped to build my claim that MD Williams and his accomplices‟ abuse and

misuse of power, authority and influence, have exposed the company, government and entire

nation to an extreme public disrepute:

A. As said earlier, this witch hunt action was taken by management on Friday January 25,

2013. Because of its incredibly abrupt and cruel nature, a whistleblower reported it

immediately the next working day, Monday, January 28, 2013 in the Microscope

Newspaper under the back page title “Witch Hunt At LPRC-One Dismissed, Others To

Follow”. Although the report was laden with many typographical mistakes, the

whistleblower, through the paper, reported or suggested among other things, the

following:

a. One Roland Kartee was allegedly dismissed out of witch hunt for comments he

made against a certain management demotion scheme.

b. LPRC had allegedly paid up to five media houses not to speak to the malpractices

going on at the entity.

c. The current demotion in question was targeted at those who had not acquired

overseas education.

d. That the dubious demotion scheme had already started the Friday earlier, with

scores of managers and directors being demoted by management.

e. That MD Williams was also trying to make some room for fraternal brothers (or

accommodations) from institutions like Alpha O. Alpha, the Masonic, and (other)

traditional societies etc. Note, it‟s actually Alpha Phi Alpha. (Microscope Newspaper,

Monday, January 28, 2013 Pg. 7 and back page).

Now, a conscious and professional MD would have known very well that I, Roland Kartee, am

knowledgeable enough to substantiate totally, or at least partially, each one of the five grave

allegations presented above, but being very irresponsible, remorseless and unscrupulous,

owing to criminally impaired judgement and calculations, MD Williams, through management

went two day later to the People Newspaper and refuted almost everything that had been

reported in the earlier Microscope Publication. In the words of the LPRC Management, the

Microscope report was false, misleading, reckless, condescending and with no iota of truth -

leaving no room for discussing anything further in this article. (LPRC Dispels Media Report:

The People Newspaper, Wednesday, January 30, 2013).

Fortunately, with the knowledge I have about the situation and the bone I have to pick with

management already, this was a glorious opportunity for me to burst onto the airwaves the

next day and grab them by the short hairs, but again, I remained cautious of many things,

including the fact that I had gone nowhere yet into the complaint process that my mind was

already made up to follow to its logical conclusion; my professional ethics as an information

custodian doesn‟t encourage going public too fast, and as a person from an administrative

background, I knew corporate entities were not meant to be run in the press. Moreover, with

the intent of using this case to positively impact society, I needed to involve more stakeholders

including the press. It was necessary to know how the press too was tackling each one of

corruption‟s accomplices or helpmates, such as „cadeaus solicitations or requests to publish

stories‟, influence peddling, irresponsible leadership, lack of principle-mindedness; and

fortunately, two media houses had already fallen onto my radar (Microscope and the People),

but I had to pause them for a while and go according to the road map. This takes us to point

(B).

B. I started following up on the appeal/complaint process with my protest letter already on

the desk of the MD and Board Chairman. After putting up some pressure in few days, I

got a response on February 4, 2013 narrating something like a post-action (post-

dismissal) investigation report, with even additional wild allegations coming against

me. LPRC had now formally investigated me in my absence, as suggested by this

February 4, 2013 letter. To avoid a looming vicious cycle of a war of words, I decided

to start engaging the Board Chairman and Reverend in person, a trend which started

yielding some outcome. The Chairman acknowledged that my complaint had some

substance, but requested my patience so that the entire Board could look into it during

their February sitting. This seemed to have been another scam as February went by,

March came and left, and we were now well into April 2013. Each time I phoned or

„popped‟ into the Chairman‟s Office to find out when my fate would be finally decided,

I got an assurance of the next Board meeting. Exhausted by their whole bag of tricks, I

and my immediate family embarked on a peaceful direct action (a sit-in) before the

LPRC PST Compound on Monday, April 22, 2013, demanding justice; and the

argument was, if management stood by their allegations and trusted the authenticity of

the instruments served me thus far, then they should take me to court, as their first

action was not enough for a convicted criminal, while I maintained and still maintain

that I cannot litigate on a fake document. I also demanded (I and my family) that in

the absence of management meeting this condition, I needed to be given access to the

office for work; and I needed to be receiving my pay checks in the interim as my

family was starving and experiencing excruciating circumstances at the hands of

these very cruel people. The Liberian National Police is knowledgeable of this April

22, 2013 civic action. I was begged by the LPRC Management for us to handle this

issue at the Board level once again, but they asked me to formally request an audience

with the Board directly so as to secure a spot on the agenda of the Board‟s next meeting

which was due in very few days, May the 3rd

or thereabouts. In further cooperation, I

did the communication on April 26, 2013 as you will see attached or enclosed here.

Another foot-dragging began, that prompted some pressure from me again, so I was

formally invited by the Board for the first time since the wrangle started, and this

happened June 19, 2013. After my explanation, the Board promised it would launch its

own investigation, and urged me to remain all ears in the next few days as I will be

called upon for inquiries or other requirements. They actually encouraged me that all

this would be done in a matter of days for this issue to be finally laid to rest. This again,

was another scam, as nobody from the Board or Management ever cared to call me

again and June winded to a final close. During the early morning hours of July 1, 2013,

I phoned the Board Chairman, and in strong terms I registered by suspicion of being

scammed by their too many verbal promises and I would not rest until I got a formal

assurance. That was when the Board Chairman quickly put some communication

together the same day, using both manual and computer scripts, requesting on behalf of

the Board, to get to me in a couple of weeks. His secretary called me for this letter

during the afternoon hours of July 1, 2013. I am attaching a copy the letter here.

I then formally responded two days later, in again, another somewhat strong terms requesting,

among other things, that my family be surviving on my pay checks while the Board foot

dragged with their investigations, especially since it was convincing now that my complaint

had substance. I also requested a time frame for their investigations. Apparently aggravated by

this genuine claim of mine, Rev. Dr. Browne, who had all through these months admitted to

the merits of my complaints, hurriedly and unprofessionally prepared another letter, this time,

confirming to me the Board‟s concurrence with management for that bogus January 25, 2013‟s

action, and thus closing this case from the LPRC‟s end, after close to 7 months of delay

tactics.

I am meanwhile an aggrieved senior staff of 10 years service going through all this, along with

my young family, at the hand of a Rev-Dr. chaired Board of Directors, when this same Board

took less than one week to galvanize thousands of U.S Dollars of corporate resources to

convene an emergency meeting to discuss and conclude upon a „mere‟ whistleblower claim.

This too is Liberia!!! (Concord Times Newspaper, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 page 4,

paragraphs 1 and 2).

C. With this July 15, 2013‟s closure by Rev. Dr. Browne of our case from the LPRC‟s end,

I now turned to my next stakeholders, the press, for the last part of July and the entire

month of August 2013. I knew with our general Liberian mentality, these late January

publications had now become stale news after 7 months; but for me, once they had been

inked or penned down, they remain significant tools for work. I got particularly

motivated that I was about to delve into a January 28, 2013 and a January 30, 2013

story in July and August 2013 because of the following reason. My thorough research

about Liberia has proven that this country hates or has decided to ignore the use of

HISTORY as the major tool to help us understand TODAY, fix the issues of TODAY,

and secure a much better TOMORROW. It is my wish that all Liberians acquaint

themselves with the triplet below, a beautiful combination of three related quotations

about the IMPORTANCE OF USING HISTORY IN FINDING SOLUTIONS TO

OUR CHRONIC PROBLEMS as we move ahead as a country, so I do include them in

almost all of my writings nowadays:

James Burke and David Mclollough jointly say, “If you don‟t know where you come

from, then you wouldn‟t know where you are”; and so, “History is who we are,

and why we are the way we are.”

Those who don‟t know History are probably also not doing well in their English

and Maths “ - this is according P. J. D’Rouke; and finally,

Bettina Drew says, “The past reminds us of timeless human truths and allows for

the perpetuation of cultural traditions that can be nourishing; the past contains

examples of mistakes to avoid; the past preserves the memory of alternative ways

of doing things; and the past is the basis for self understanding.”

With this worthwhile side tracking, let‟s get back to my engagement with the press starting

late July on these old January stories. My first two papers to visit physically were Microscope

and the People’s Newspapers, where I met authorities; introduced myself as the Roland Kartee

allegedly dismissed out of witch hunt, according to their January 28, 2013 and January 30,

2013 whistleblower and subsequent rebuttal stories respectively. I was granted some interview

by both papers and I also left with them some physical documents as prima facie evidence

against some of the issues I had raised during the interviews. During the interviews, I touched

on each of the five major whistleblower allegations as presented earlier according to the

Microscope’s January 28, 2013 story as follows, among other things:

a) One Roland Kartee was allegedly dismissed out of which hunt for comments he

made against a certain management demotion scheme: To this whistleblower claim,

although the LPRC management had already declared it reckless, with no iota of truth, I

presented my bogus dismissal letter; explained the circumstances ensuing, and

disclosed that from the LPRC‟s angle, they really meant a legitimate dismissal as I have

always been stopped from entering the company‟s premises, but I still considered it a

scam that I would never dignify until certain conditions are met. I also made a

correction to my title in their papers.

b) LPRC had allegedly paid up to five media houses not to speak to the malpractices

going on at the entity: Again, while LPRC said this was false, misleading, and

reckless, I told both papers, I was still investigating this claim.

c) The current demotion scheme was targeted at those who did not acquire overseas

education: To this point, I responded, true to management‟s argument during our

fateful January 18, 2013‟s meeting that they wanted the number of managers reduced to

match Lewis Brown‟s time number, (Note, Lewis Brown served as MD of LPRC from

1997-1999), the current number of managers at LPRC was now around 7, 4 of which

are „imported bureaucrats‟ and the balance 3 either MD William‟s cronies or closed

ethnic affiliates, though I was not doubting their qualifications. And let me put myself

on record for this, I am not against bringing Liberians down for work from overseas,

but I am against doing so at the detriment or disadvantage of fellow Liberians that

remained and suffered here to acquire their education, not forgetting those that are even

currently in the process of struggling here in this tough terrain to achieve their

education. And secondly, for our economic and social status, we only need high caliber

technical and /or technological experts “imported” for work, and not just every Tom,

Dike and Harry, Period!!! What is the economic benefit and essence of “importing”

Business Management, Sociology, Political Science etc. degree holders when our

universities started training people in some of these and other areas 100 years back, and

our universities to date, continue to put out thousands of students in these areas every

year? But if we, as a nation, feel that these statements are too strong, and that Liberia

should remain dead set in her culture of perpetuating political accommodations,

cronyism, and sectionalism etc. then we can give it a try for the next century again, to

see if growth, development and prosperity will ever be attained in this country.

d) That the “dubious” demotion scheme had already started the Friday earlier,

meaning the same January 18, 2013, with scores of managers and directors being

demoted by management: To this claim, I disclosed, it was true, although I could not

get hold of the communication to this effect. I therefore encouraged them to send their

own journalists to LPRC to investigate the claim. I further explained that to prove this

point, all those managers that bore the current version of ID and complementary cards

as mine, were now demoted. Some of my affected colleagues I mentioned included

Mark W. Bropleh (who had now ceased from being called Technical Manager to

Assistant Technical Manager), Jayjay B. Ducan (Training Manager, was now both

demoted and laterally transferred as Assistant Human Resource Manager), Victor G.

Badio (Human Resource Manager, was now demoted and laterally transferred as

Assistant Credit Manager, an Accounts Receivable handling position, then later

transferred to a marketing function) etc. You could even read more about these

unprofessional and demoralizing demotion and lateral transfer activities in the People

Newspaper, Wednesday, January 30, 2013 edition, page 6 second column from left to

right, paragraph 2 under “LPRC Dispels;” the New Democrat, Tuesday, March 19,

2013 page 4, second column from left to right and 4th paragraph under” LPRC

Whistleblower Writes President Sirleaf”; and the Concord Times Newspaper,

Wednesday, April 17, 2013 page 5, paragraphs 6,7 and 8 of the first column left.

e) That MD Williams was also trying to make some room for fraternal brothers (or

accommodations) from institutions like Alpha O. Alpha, the Masonic, and (other)

traditional societies etc. Note, it’s actually Alpha Phi Alpha: To this claim I

responded, it was very highly probable because of the following related observations:

MD Williams often times dishes out our hard earned corporate monies to his personal

fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, for reasons God knows why. Two instances to the best of my

knowledge include:

#. Date Payment Voucher

Number Amount Bank Acct#/Bank

1 Oct. 28, 2010 PV – ? 1,000 110001-LBDI USD Checking A/C

2 Jan. 9, 2012 PV-16547 1,000 “

TOTAL 2,000

Moreover, I got a very credible tip off that MD Williams was targeting my current position

(Business Applications Manager) for one of his fraternal brothers, but as soon this alarm

blew in the newspapers and he went and denied the dismissal, coupled with the fact that I too

have been proving stubborn to do their so-called one-line apology letter, as if he and his

lieutenants were strong enough to ramp something down my „conscious‟ throat, the Business

Applications Office, my office, continues to remain vacant after over a year. This was a

position highly recommended by the GEMAP Program, through an Egyptian Information

Technology Consultant, and I, the first and only occupant thus far, received a bulk of my

training under the direct supervision or recommendation of the GEMAP Program. It is a very

mission-critical function with respect to emerging technological and information management

systems and environments. The current Management Information Systems (MIS) Manager at

LPRC, Mr. John M. Dukuly, and the last serving GEMAP Comptroller, Mr. Kamau

Lizwelicha, now in Florida, the USA, can attest to this claim. To date, over a year after my

illegal ex-communication from the LPRC premises, my personal bag remains in the office, and

the position remains unoccupied as if it were my personal position - if they really meant that

their actions were legitimate. Whether a productive and responsible leadership can behave as

such is another million dollar question. Or, just as the Government of Liberia now stabs the

Anti-corruption and General Auditing Commissions in their backs after qualifying for debt

waivers and starting to contract new loans, the recommendations and legacies of the GEMAP

program are now worthless because Liberia is now well-off. Note: GEMAP is the Governance

and Economic Management Assistance Program, a scheme setup by the United States Agency

for International Development (USAID) to help Liberia build a proficient public sector.

After all these explanations and the presentation of extra documents to prove these and other

improprieties of the LPRC Management at the offices of both the Microscope and the People’s

Newspapers on Friday, July 19, 2013, “without doing the normal Liberian thing, the „cadeau

payment to get stories published”, I was promised by both papers that they would balance their

story by soliciting, or investigating the LPRC side of things, and that they would call me for

any inquiries if necessary.

Between Monday, July 22, 2013 and Tuesday, the next day, Microscope went to LPRC “to

conduct her probe”. I too was blessed with my part of insider tip off that Microscope was

given some “cadeau” by the LPRC Management to, in their words, „discourage the news

maker.‟ Wednesday, July 24, 2013, I saw a funny, carelessly prepared public service

announcement in the Microscope Newspaper that read, “The Management of the Liberia

Petroleum Refining Company (LPRC) wishes to inform the general public that Mr. Roland

Kartee is no longer in the employ of the company. Anyone doing business with him in the

name of the company will be doing so at his/her own risk. Thanks for your understanding”,

(The Microscope, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, pg. 3); there‟s no stated reason(s) whatsoever

and no clue at least as to when the severance happened. This is the same Roland Kartee whose

„illegal‟ dismissal revelation in the Microscope Newspaper of January 28, 2013 caused the

LPRC Management to unleash all of the grandiloquent terms they‟ve learnt from Atlanta and

Chicago, describing the newspaper‟s report as false, misleading, reckless, condescending,

and with no iota of truth. LPRC had enough loose cash that Wednesday to discourage

Roland Kartee‟s efforts and wreck his family‟s life, so they were all around the place featuring

this same announcement with the same wordings in several local dailies. Another newspaper I

was able to lay hands on was the Nation Times Newspaper, Wednesday, July 24, 2013, page 4.

It looked as though the People‟s Newspaper was not satisfied with her part of the „cadeau‟ so

they delayed their part of the Roland Kartee announcement publication until LPRC apparently

showed down adequately. Monday, July 29, 2013, they published theirs, same wordings.

Those were the local dailies I could lay hands on.

I became more conscious of count (b) of the whistleblower‟s allegations above, that LPRC

had paid up to five media houses not to speak to the malpractices going on at the entity. It

was time to test the veracity of this allegation at other media houses despite the fact that my

family was, and continues to „catch hell‟. I took my story and some of my documents to the

National Chronicle, the New Democrat, and the In Profile Daily, three of Liberia‟s giant anti-

corruption reporters. I still maintained a more civic-oriented posture in all of my narratives,

calling on the appointer of these guys, the President, to intervene by relieving them of their

respective positions for us to go to court and get exonerated one by one, because while they

were suffering me around for a single allegation, refusing to prosecute me, I had, and continue

to have, over 10 solid allegations, all strongly bordering on our nation‟s future and interest,

that I can substantiate all in court, God willing. Taking the air waves has not been my target. It

is only the In Profile Daily that brought up something about my story in their Tuesday, August

27, 2013 edition, under the title, “Dismissed LPRC Employee Opens Up,” and although I had

a couple of problems with their report here and there, especially as they focused more on the

issues of a single transaction as opposed to the more civic minded approach I had targeted, I

remain on the overall very appreciative to them, the In Profile Daily. But to date, the National

Chronicle and the New Democrat are still investigating to balance their story. I will try to

engage the PUL (Press Union of Liberia)‟s authorities for all of the above more actively than

this, God willing.

I took my search for redress next to the highest rung of the ladder by writing the President‟s

office twice; first, humbly seeking an audience, to enable me narrate some of these things

personally. I got no response, and after a couple of weeks, I wrote a second and more forceful

letter, this time delving into some of the substantives at LPRC and reiterating my civic stance.

The first letter was dated September 2, 2013 and the second letter was dated September 23,

2013 and each letter was delivered to the Executive Mansion/Foreign Ministry within one to

two days of its preparation. I received no feedback for any of these communications, although

not strange to me, as from MD William‟s very ascendancy, he proved to be the “Mama Baby”

of President Sirleaf. No management of LPRC, ever, in the company‟s over 35 years of

existence, has ever run its day to day affairs so negatively in the media, equal to this T. Nelson

Williams‟ Management, but he is now in his 5th

consecutive year, the second longest serving

MD in LPRC‟s history after the late Aletha Johnson Francis, who served for 6 years under a

military junta, the People‟s Redemption Council, from 1980 – 1986. Further, for 4 consecutive

years now, the President, who is on flights almost every month going to seek financial

assistance (loans, grants, and other forms of aid etc.) has never stepped at LPRC, right in

Monrovia, in the midst of a major rehabilitation work going on, but instead, she relies solely

on whatever Mr. Williams tells her. This country meanwhile has a very strong Legislative

Branch of Government really playing its oversight role, with some of their offices reportedly

spending around Four Thousand United States Dollars (US$4,000) per annum on the purchase

of local dailies etc. to help them in the process of adequately executing this oversight role.

(The New Dawn, July 5, 2013, quoting Mr. Bai Gbala, Sr). All this is happening at a major

revenue generating arm of government without any input from a Legislature that instead is

requesting for Seventy Three Million Dollars (US$73 million) budgetary allocation for

constituency development as, if this, and other huge amounts used for other purposes, would

be coming from Mars or Jupiter, if we don‟t pay keen attention to boosting all of our

productive capacities and collectively managing our resources well as a nation. I thought a

productive society instead places aggressive emphasis on revenue generation first, before

embarking on massive consumption campaigns, but for this Liberia, I see it going the opposite

way. This ugly situation must change now!!!. Moreover, the President of the country was

trained in Public Administration and Governance from the world‟s most prestigious

University, Harvard; almost 90% of her public officials, including the ones we dealt with in

this report, are Western-trained; and top on her government‟s platform has been the fight

against corruption. Liberia is tired with this funny LIP SERVICE NOW.

To still bring this issue to the public‟s attention, I and a few like-minded young Liberians,

knowledgeable and concerned about the continuous pillaging and abuse of our country‟s

resources by the current LPRC Leadership unchecked and unchallenged, staged a second

direct action (a peaceful one again) before the LPRC PST Compound on Tuesday, the 10th

of

December 2013, under the banner of the “Plain Truth Revolution,” an enterprise that promises

to use peaceful and civic means to revolutionize our country using HISTORY and PLAIN

TRUTH as the two major tools. The LPRC Management again, called on the Liberia National

Police (LNP), and this time around, instead of negotiations as they proposed during the April

22, 2013‟s direct action, my collaborators were mercilessly flogged and chased out of the site,

my fiancé, Ms. Alice Wamah, manhandled, while trying to speak a word with me when I was

in the hands of the Police, and I, and one of my sympathizers were whisked off to the Police

Central Headquarters, kept there for a while, and released later without charge. Some of our

banners that day read that “The LPRC Leadership Comprised Common Criminals And That

They Must Step Down For Us To Go To Court. Authorities at the LNP can also attest to this

second action.

To conclude, cynics may argue why I must wait for LPRC to take this so-called bogus

dismissal action against me before all these discoveries and narratives. To these cynics or

critics I say, it was the time spent out of job that afforded me the opportunity to delve more

meticulously into these grave issues. To the argument of attributing societal significance or

bigger picture significance to this case, I say, unless we Liberians can come to the

understanding that it is only the problems of each individual Liberian that we can accord

national or societal significance in order to change our country, we will never make any

progress as a people. We will never import individual‟s or group‟s problems from Mercury or

Pluto or even from Europe to apply them to our situation for change; meaning, it is a Roland

Kartee‟s, or a T. Nelson William‟s problem etc. that we can use to change Liberia. To those

overly concerned about separating personality from issues, I state to them a revolutionary

quotation from a highly respected German Economist, Politician and philosopher Karl Marx

that says “The weapon of criticism cannot of course replace criticism of the weapon.

Material force must be overthrown by material force. But theory also becomes a material

force as soon as it grips the masses, and theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as

it demonstrates adhominem, and it demonstrates adhominem as soon as it becomes radical.

To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter, and for man, the root of the matter is man

himself.” This simply means here that we will not discuss these critical issues void of people.

CORRUPTION has been the greatest threat to our national survival and upliftment for the

past 192 years and the root cause of all of our collective failures. To fight this menace now, we

need all of the strangest, but meaningful narratives depicting issues of corruption or any of its

accomplices and carriers, including greed, bad governance, selfishness, abuse, cruelty etc.

This is from whence I come, because I am convicted that the old, familiar ways of doing

everything through shortcuts, laziness etc. have failed Liberia so miserably and we need a

complete shift, which requires behaving strangely and differently, but positively.

I am prepared to cooperate to the letter with the LACC in your probe into all the claims made

here against the LPRC (current Management and Board), but I remain stuck to my guns that

based on your examination of the prima facie pieces of evidence, the „accuseds‟ should first be

relieved of their respective current positions before we can go into the actual substantives.

The stunning issues from LPRC are even more, if I were to go into the kinds of numerous

trivial Expense Accounts currently featured in this company‟s Chart Of Accounts and how

much goes into each of these funny expense accounts per annum when our fellow citizens in

other parts of the country are walking for up two days before reaching a nearby “poorly

equipped‟ health center (US State Department 2011 Human Rights Report On Liberia); when

our government, through the President has promised 20,000 jobs per annum that it can never

produce; when though the President promised to electrify only Monrovia in 6 months, but has

failed to do so miserably in 9 years, all because we talk, talk, depending only on DONORS,

PHILANTHROPISTS, and CREDITORS for everything we need, when we sit over all of the

beautiful factors of production and wealth, but I will be loading you with too much job, so this

is a second battle postponed for now.

The issues sufficiently elaborated on thus far are being outlined or summarized below, and

placed before your august body to be considered for thorough investigation and subsequent

legal actions. In summary, I do accuse the current LPRC Management and Board of Directors

in my layman terms for each of the below:

1) Undertaking a useless corporate restructuring exercise that wasted One Hundred Five

Thousand U.S. Dollars (US$105,000) of poor tax payers‟ money when the company

had just completed one that cost over US One Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars

(US$1.5 million) with tangible results (I1, Pg 1-2)

2) The use of over Four Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$400,000) in the

name of TLOs (Truck Loading Order) tickets that did not offer the company anything

substantial. (I2, Pg 2-4)

3) Breeding COLLUSION in the work place in order to completely damage the

company‟s financial internal control systems and make free room for more siphoning

and pillaging of corporate funds. (I2a, Pg 4)

4) Using Thirty One Thousand Eight Hundred Ten US Dollars (US$31,810) on some

scam exercise called Corporate Rebranding just to change the company‟s logo,

something that could have been done quietly with very little financial consequences I3,

Pg 4-5)

5) Expending One Hundred Seventy Thousand Five Hundred Dollars (US$170,500) for a

so-called corporate land that is yet to be seen since 2012 (I4a, Pg 5-6)

6) Deliberately stalling the growth of the company, and by extension the overall national

economy by perpetually restricting the role of the nation‟s only refinery to only one of

its 5 statutory mandates, all because of the alleged taking of bribes or kickbacks to keep

the situation unchanged. (I4b, Pg 6- 7)

7) Deliberately stalling the company‟s rehabilitation process, and thus suffocating the

country‟s economy just for personal gains and sinister plans (II1, Pg 7-9)

8) Stealing Liberia‟s wealth given to it by a friendly nation, Japan, and in the process both

suffering a vast majority of Monrovians who live and work along the Somalia Drive

and also damaging Liberia‟s image abroad through this criminal action (II2, Pg 9-11)

9) Criminally deriving benefit from the accidental death of a poor child, and in the process

bringing serious disgrace to the company, government, and the entire nation (II3, Pg 11-

14)

10) Using the company‟s money ruthlessly to run criminal press campaigns. (II3a, Pg 13-

14)

11. Using deceptions and faulty managerial theories to run the company. (III1, Pg 15-27)

12. Destroying the company by the use of personal hatred and witch hunt (III1a, Pg 15-17)

13. Careless and unprofessional administration of the company that has brought about a

demoralized workforce. (III1, Pg 23)

14. Spreading lies in the press and exposing the company and the government to

unwarranted public disrepute (III1, Pg 25)

15. Illegally disbursing corporate funds to a personal fraternity (III1, Pg 23-24)

16. Breeding sectionalism in the company by suppressing locally educated employees for

the interests of friends, tribal affiliates and cronies from abroad (III1, Pg 22-23)

17. Criminal complicity by the current Board in some or all of these.

Thank you very much, Cllr. Verdier, and the LACC family, for beginning the real war against

corruption by taking this LPRC case very seriously as I can fearlessly declare to you and

anyone else for that matter that this company is the EPICENTER OF LIBERIA‟S 21ST

CENTURY CORRUPTION.

I remain at your service for all inquiries and subsequent proceedings.

Yours sincerely,

Roland S. Kartee

Business Applications Manager (LPRC)/Initiator of the Plain Truth Revolution

Cell#:0886-761008

Private email: karteers@hotmail.com