Now that Harry Greaves Has Been Fired, He Should Be Prosecuted, and His Stolen Wealth Confiscated Soccer Legends

Sunday, September 27, 2009                            

Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh

    During a 2005 campaign stop in Atlanta, Georgia, I handed to then-presidential candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf a business card with the web address of The Liberian Dialogue, hoping she would visit the web site whenever she feels it was appropriate to do so.

     She assured me that she would, but it is unknown whether she kept her promise now that she is no longer presidential candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the lady whom I met quietly without any hassle that day, but is now President Sirleaf, which makes it much harder to meet her and ascertain whether she reads The Liberian Dialogue, or any of the foreign-based Liberian web sites that deals with hot-button issues coming out of the country she now governs.               

                                           Harry A. Greaves Jr.

     I have written consistently about those issues column after column regarding the president’s perceived lacked of vision, coupled with a rudderless administration with no sense of direction, and a president who encourages nepotism, extreme loyalty to her friends, is always protecting corrupt government officials; and a president with no genuine interest to assists low income or no income Liberians in the new Liberia she claims to be building. 

    However, the recent firing of former presidential confidante Harry A. Greaves Jr., is reason to believe President Sirleaf has been listening to Liberians and reading opinion pieces that often calls for the firing, prosecution, and the confiscation of stolen government funds by corrupt government officials.

     Greaves’ firing also made me to believe the president visits and reads web sites out of Liberia including The Liberian Dialogue, which called for the firing of Harry Greaves, and even questioned the wisdom behind the president’s reluctance to fire the man whose corrupt, reckless, ruthless, and don’t care attitude often undermined her administration and became an embarrassment to the nation, time after time.

    Reaction to Greaves’ firing met unanimous approval from Liberians in and out of the country, who either worked with him personally or never met the man at all, but followed news reports of his controversial and rocky tenure at the Liberian Petroleum Refinery Corporation (LPRC), where he was the undisputed oil baron – a rebel and unilateral oil deal maker, who never hesitated to remind his detractors of his close relationship to President Sirleaf whenever he had the chance to do so.

     Indeed, Harry A. Greaves Jr., was an embarrassment not only to President Sirleaf but also to the Liberian nation, which were enough reasons to immediately fire the man. However, because Greaves was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s closest ally during her darkest and most ambitious hours, when she needed a friend to stand by her side to help plot her ascension to the presidency, she ignored his recklessness and turned the other way and accepted his bad behavior.

     With Greaves’ guidance, he co-founded with her and others in the late 1980s the deceptive political advocacy group, Association for Constitutional Democracy in Liberia (ACDL), which gave the future president a pulpit and a platform to keep her anti-government rhetoric on the front burner, and elevated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the opposition politician role for which she was later known.

     The publicity also helped the group raised needed funds, which later guided Ellen’s decision to engage in the senseless armed insurrection that later maimed countless Liberians, raped Liberian women, destroyed Liberia, and killed countless Liberians to satisfy the selfish political goals of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

     Greaves’ loyalty to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf eventually paid off after she finally got her dream job, the Liberian presidency, which meant payback time, as Greaves’ uncompromising loyalty to Ellen strengthened her resolve to hire him for the LPRC managing director’s job, which validates his friendship with the president and paved the way for Harry Greaves to be the non-team player he was, and took presidential friendship to another level by being a rule breaker who did things his way while the rest of the administration went the other way.

     Harry A. Greaves Jr., was a non-team player in the Sirleaf administration, who was despised by so many people not because of his position in government but because of the ruthless person behind the name, who care less about public opinion and the negative image he projected, and didn’t see anything wrong when he refused to appear before the Liberian congress whom he sued when that body requested that he appear before them to explain his unilateral decision to sign a $24.8 million oil deal with the UK-based Zakhen International and the Liberian Petroleum Refinery Corporation.

     Greaves’ unilateral signing of oil contracts took another turn in 2006, when he signed another controversial oil deal worth millions of dollars with the Nigerian-based Addax Ltd, on behalf of the Liberian Petroleum Refinery Corporation, in violation of the Public Procurement and Contract Law of Liberia, and has since refused to make available to the public copies of that contract.

     Surprisingly, Greaves’ naked arrogance and obvious lack of professionalism did not cause him his job, but corruption – a $300,000 bribery scandal involving Greaves and Zakhem International. Interestingly, Greaves made it look like he was a victim of an alleged plot to extort money from him, and accused Aloysius Jappah as the individual who tried to solicit that bribe from him to influence the investigation. At the end of it all, both Greaves and Jappah were fired.

     This is a first for this president to go out of her way to fire a confidant for corruption. Had she not dragged her feet and appeared to be indecisive in making a decision of this kind involving a friend, I would have given the president an A for courage and leadership.

     However, while it is true that this is a first step, it is also a baby step in Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s “war” on corruption; and that fight has to go further.

     President Sirleaf cannot afford to play the politics of old that recycles fired government officials to another lucrative or high-profiled government job after those individuals have been fired, as if they did nothing wrong.

      President Sirleaf must go further by persecuting Harry A. Greaves Jr., (if the courage is there), and must go even further by going after his stolen wealth, and the stolen wealth of other corrupt former government officials kept in Liberia and in foreign banks.