For two years, Charles Taylor, the West African warlord and former president of Liberia, has been locked in a Dutch high-security jail, leaving the compound only for his war crimes trial.
But while he is in the dock, the hunt is still on for his legendary missing fortune. Prosecutors say the most exhaustive effort to date is under way to pinpoint the money the former dictator is believed to have amassed by pilfering the coffers of his country and running smuggling operations, particularly of diamonds, deep inside neighboring states.
No money has been seized, but investigators say they have made some breakthroughs recently.
"We have new information that more than US$1 billion passed through Taylor's personal bank accounts between 1997 and 2003 when he was president," said Stephen Rapp, the chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is trying Taylor at an outpost in The Hague.
The court now has the aid of a London law firm with experience in recovering wealth stolen by dictators and other leaders.
Taylor, 60, has been charged with pillaging, but his hidden accounts and assets are also central to his prosecution on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The prosecutors want to demonstrate how he financed operations that dragged neighboring Sierra Leone into a civil war that lasted more than a decade.
Prosecutors argue that Taylor used stolen millions, including profits from smuggled diamonds, to buy the loyalty, weapons and supplies for rebels in Sierra Leone and other neighboring countries. His indictment holds him accountable for the rebels' barbaric methods, as they pillaged, killed, raped, used children as soldiers and hacked off hands or feet of innocent civilians.
If the international judges' panel finds Taylor guilty of pillaging, the court can seize assets proven to belong to him or his associates and use the money for restitution.
The UN has frozen US$6 million in assets, in the name of Taylor or his associates, in 10 countries.
"It's a start, but it can't be seized until we prove it's Taylor's money," Rapp said.
The London lawyers are enlisting law enforcement agencies to press banks in several financial havens to cooperate, Rapp said, adding that some countries, including the Bahamas and Switzerland, are already helping.
"Enough progress has already been made to show that more can be found," he said.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS