STATE MONEY THEFT- NOW ABASS DANCES WITH "SQUIRRILSATION"

WAS IT A CHEQUE OR WAS IT A BANKERS DRAFT - WHO CARES- JUST PAY BACK THE US$210,000 TO THE STATE

."......the matter was settled extra-judicially by way of an agreement between the parties. Under that agreement I was required to pay immediately US$105,000, being one-half of the total monies I received from a Mr. Frank Yiu,........."- Dr Abass Cherenor Bundu
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"Information at my disposal points to the fact that the cheque aforesaid was subsequently dishonoured upon instructions of the accused, Abass Bundu. I am also led to believe that the second tranche was likewise not paid, meaning that no payment of any part of the money was ever made” The letter states and went on, “Consequent upon the foregoing, Government proposes to institute both criminal and civil proceedings in court against the said Abass Bundu…A charge of conspiracy to defraud the Government of Sierra Leone is highly contemplated"...............Attorney General

After reading the bold Press statement by Dr Abass Cherenor Bundu, my mind buggles with a few questions regarding the "BOUNCED cheque (which he claimed did not materilised and yet the letter from the Artoney General mentioned it did) and the "Bankers Draft  which Abass claimed was used to pay the US$105,000 (and yet the Artoney General's letter states that NOTHING was paid to the Government.) WHERE DOSE THE TRUTH LIE?

QUESTIONS:
DID ABASS BUNDU HAVE IN HIS BANK BALANCE AT THE APPROPRIATE TIME - US$105,000?

DID ABBASS  ISSUE HIS PERSONAL CHEQUE, TO THE COURT (MAYBE THROUGH HIS THEN LAWYERS - (RENNER THOMAS &CO) TO GET THE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT IN PLACE, KNOWING HE HAD NO SUCH AMOUNT IN HIS  BANK, BUT TO BUY TIME TO HUSSELL FOR THE CASH AND MAKE GOOD THE SETTLEMENT OF THIS IMMEDIATE BILL.(Remember! Abass was required to PAY IMMEDIATLY.) 

The[Attorney General's letter to Renner Thomas &Co] letter dated 27^th March, 2012 reads “…You would also recall forwarding a cheque for the sum of US$105,000.00 (One Hundred and Five Thousand United States Dollars) to my office on behalf of the said Abass Bundu as part payment of the sum of US$210,000.00 (Two Hundred and Ten Thousand Dollars) in full settlement of the matter]

 HAVING GOT THE AGREEMENT IN PLACE, DID  ABASS STOP THE INITIAL  CHEQUE FOR US$105,000 THAT WAS PAID TO THE COURT SO HE CAN FIND THE CASH AND PAY IT IN LIEU? (THE ARTONEY GENERAL'S LETTER STATED THE CHEQUED WAS "BOUNCED" I. E. DISHONOURED BY THE BANK "ON THE INSTRCTIONS OF THE ACCUSED ABASS BUNDU.)

HAVING THEN FOUND THE MONEY, (ABASS CLAIMED IN HIS PRESS CONFERENCE THAT A BANKERS DRAFT WAS THE INSTRUMENT OF PAYMENT OF THE REQUIRED US$105,000) DID ABASS THEN PURCHASED THIS BANKERS DRAFT WITH THE CASH 'OVERTHE COUNTER' ? OR, DID HE PAY THAT NEW MONEY INTO HIS BANK ACCOUNT TO ENABLE THE EQUIVILENT SUM TO BE DEBITED AND THE BANKERS DRAFT ISSUED -MAKING IT LOOK LIKE EVERY THING CAME THROUGH THE ACCOUNT?

IF CASH WAS PAID IN LIEU, FOR THE PURCHASE OF THE BANKERS DRAFT, THE TRANSACTION WILL NOT BE RECORDED IN THE ACCOUNT.  IF HOWEVER THE INITIAL CHEQUE WAS RETURNED UNPAID, I.E. "BOUNCED" THIS CAN CLEARLY BE REFLECTED IN THE ACCOUNT.

ABASS CLAIMED IN HIS PRESS CONFERENCE..:

"...In the circumstances, therefore, I had no choice but to pay under protest. The letter from my Solicitors, dated 12 September 1996, which accompanied the payment, made the point that I had agreed to pay only to underscore the contention that I had had absolutely no criminal intent whatsoever in all my dealings, official or private, with Mr. Frank Yiu.

Upon this understanding the Government duly received, by way of a Bank Draft, the sum of US$105,000. So, again, contrary to widespread speculation in the Press, I did not issue a personal cheque to the Government which subsequently bounced..."

 
Artoney General says
 "...Information at my disposal points to the fact that the cheque aforesaid was subsequently dishonoured upon instructions of the accused, Abass Bundu."

 IT WOULD APPEAR THAT A CHEQUE WAS ISSUED, THEN STOPPED, TO BE REPLACED BY A BANKERS DRAFT WHICH WAS NOT PRESENTED FOR PAYMENT  OR A DEAL WAS REACHED IN SOME WAY RESULTING IN THE FACT THAT NOTHING WAS ACTUALLY PAID IN SETTLEMENT OF THGE US $ 210,000.

IF A BANKERS DRAFT WAS ISSUED , PRESENTED AND CLEARED, THE RECORDS OF THE BANK, THE COURT RECORDS , ABASS'S ACCOUNT & BANK STATEMENTS ARE ALL TO BE EXAMINED

ONE WAY OR THE OTHER, THIS CAN EASILY BE VERIFIED AND CLARIFIED - FIND THE CLEARED BANKERS DRAFT.


PLEASE CLICK AND READ THE TWO LINKS BELOW

  :
http://www.sierraconnection.com/



http://standardtimespress.org/?p=1867


http://news.sl/drwebsite/exec/view.cgi?archive=2&num=1123

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06/04/2012
SO The payment was by a personal cheque. Is ABASS A LIER AS  WELL?

Update from Standar Times

PLEASE ENJOY THIS

Whether it was a plea-bargain or for political reason Dr. Bundu must explain

Mr. Kalilu .I. Totangi should not have been the right person to defend the Passport Mafia, Dr. Abass Bundu. Whatever syllogism or hypothetical statement he uses or legal loophole to save the skin of his counterpart he would not win. Of course, one would understand why Kalilu .I.Totangi is playing the role of a Defence Attorney on the platform of the “Pious Foray Court” that is appreciated by less than five hundred readers, which does not go beyond Waterloo where Pious Foray has opened another Cookery Shop to attract young girls along the New Freetown-Waterloo Road.



For those who may know the author of that piece ‘Beware The Antics of Yellow Journalists And Their Desperate Political Paymasters” published in the Democrat of 2^nd April, 2012 edition on page 6 he is not different from Dr. Abass Bundu in a number of ways. Journalists who went through the funded UNDP Communication Strategy Training to become Information Officers can still recalled how funds provided by UNDP was embezzled, misappropriated and wrongly utilized by Kalilu .I.Totangi when he was in charge of the programme. The unfortunate situation and unpatriotic action of this individual who ran away from the United States of America caused the collapse of such a brilliant and rewarding programme. Those Journalists who should have benefitted from the programme ended up being displaced and unemployed.

This is the Defence Attorney of Dr Abass Bundu, as the saying goes “Anvil of identical plumage converge excessively” Since he was shown the exit doors of the Ministry of Information and Communication during the tenure of Professor Septimus Kaikai, even Hon. I.B.Kargbo has refused to countenance his talent or contribution to any donor funded project for fear that history will repeat itself. “It was the same antics that were applied in 2007, when a notorious blackmail journalist published a lie that the Government of Tejan Kabbah had sold Libyan rice and pocketed the money…” wrote Kalilu I.Totangi the embezzler of donor fund. Perhaps, additional information about the Libyan rice would keep him quiet and come to the realization that “There are Journalists and there are Journalists’ the other shipload of Libyan rice was sold in Ghana and bought by a very wealthy Lebanese Businessman (name withheld), who was a close friend of ex-President Tejan Kabbah. This Lebanese businessman owns huge buildings in Freetown- Sierra Leone and one of it was bought by NASSIT that is currently utilized by the institution as its Head Office.

The Libyan rice is now history, but if Kalilu I.Totangi wants it discussed for the second time it would not be to his advantage or his political party. There are pieces of evidence in the possession of this press, which are very pertinent to the story. Evidence bearing the signature of the former Attorney General, Mr. Fred Carew who forced a retraction to be published with threat of sending the editorial team to jail if the condition is not fulfilled is still available with this press. Coming to the Dr. Abass Bundu Passport case that is hanging over his head, Kalilu I.Totangi whose new role is a self appointed Defence Attorney has failed to recognize the fact that it is not a hard and fast rule for the action of one government to be complied by the other. If Dr. Abass Bundu was absolved of any wrong doing by the Kabbah-led SLPP government why was he not acquitted and discharged and a certificate issued to him by the Court? At the Criminal Investigation Department(CID) where statement was obtained from him two days back he admitted receiving money from Frank Yiu and claimed that it was a personal donation to his electioneering campaign, which sounds ridiculous and a provocation to the intelligence of Sierra Leoneans.

He told Detectives that he was acquitted in the matter. Acquittal alone is not sufficient to walk the streets of Freetown as a free man or a discharge. Both should be secured in any criminal matter, therefore if Dr. Abass Bundu has confirmed that he was only discharged from court, which means that he could be called upon again when fresh evidence emerges.

A plea-bargain; which Dr. Abass Bundu fully knows about is a guilty verdict. What it does, is that it prevents the herculean task of going into a full blown trial, but does not exclude the penalty and punishment, because it takes into account time, Judges and Magistrates could be lenient. It is an out of Court arrangement between the Prosecutor and Defence on behalf of a client. Dr. Abass Bundu may have entered into a plea bargain with the then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Hon. Solomon Ekuma Berewa, or his lawyers did that on his behalf and agreed to refund monies collected from Frank Yiu. This was done against the background of not going to the open Court to be prosecuted, where evidence would be adduced in Court. It is not known what the line of argument or defence is, by the self appointed Defence Attorney. The action of Government is neither a witch-hunt nor a political victimization, but a demand to account of his stewardship regarding those Passports he collected monies from the appointed agent that he should refund to the people and Government what rightly belongs to them.

It is absurd for Kalilu I.Totangi to make a “no case submission” on behalf of Dr. Abass Bundu when he knows that there are substantial and circumstantial evidence against him. Regarding the payment of US$105,000 that he argued was honoured by a bank draft. It would surprise him to know that it was not a bank draft but a cheque that should be withdrawn from his London Bank Account. A copy of the Cheque was shown to Journalists at the office of the then Attorney General and Minister of Justice during a Press Conference when Hon. Solomon Berewa told Pressmen that Dr. Bundu has given an indication to pay and produced a copy of the Cheque that he paid to Government. One weighs the argument of Kalilu I.Totangi as fluid and lacks the ingredients of a good Defence Attorney. He will have to hold further consultations with his client, if he is to pursue the matter, if not he would end up crashing at the wide gates of the Law Court Building when the matter kicks up for hearing.

The letter from the late Fred Carew that Kalilu I.Totangi is waving on the faces of those who are not aufait with the procedures of criminal cases and also which he himself cannot fully comprehend and assimilate did not state that the matter has been nullified. In another words, the letter is not a nolle prosequi, which powers rest in the hands of the Attorney General or the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), even with that; an incoming Government has the power to recommence proceedings if it choose to do so pending the gravity of evidence available.

IS JULIUS MAADA BIO A STATE MONEY THIEF? 2

AFTER  ABASS BUNDU- WHO NEXT IN THIS SQUERRELGATE AFFAIR ?

                                                       

We need a leader who teaches our youth honesty... we [Bio's proposed SLPP led Government come November 2012] will not engage in dubious contracts to fleece this country and squirrel the loot away in foreign bank accounts"- JULIUS MAADA BIO IN HIS MAIDEN SPEECH (September 2011)                                            Dr Bylden has again provided us with food for thought. Who would have thought that Dr Abass Chernor Bundu, former Secretary General of the Economic States of West Africa (ECOWAS) would this day be in the disgraceful position he finds himself. Before he left The Commonwealth Institute in the early 1980s where he served as Administrative Director?? Abass was the President of the APC UK and Ireland Branch and also President of the  SIERRA LEONEAN (UK)  STUDENTS' Union. Both bodies saw their own under his service until Dr. Siaka Stevens stepped in . The demise of the Students Union was laid. In 1982 we revitalised the work of the Party in the UK with me as President of the UK Branch and Chairman of London Unit, until the 1992 coup by NPRC. This put paid to the Party's operations until late 1990s when the rebel war began to cool off. Abass went home  "to serve [his] country" But oh ya! all we have had for several years -beyond the nine years of this Passport saga is dismantlement surrounding his sincerity, role as a leader, and honesty in matters relating to serving his country. He appears to have served every government since he left the Commonwealth Secretarial job 1982: at one time, playing combining roles as a member of the Sierra Leone Parliament, and as Secretary General of ECOAWS. I hasten to say, with no less controversy than the rest of his politics- always forging ahead with an air of bravery, boldness and a determination to defend himself under the guidance of THE LAW, even if and when he he certainly and clearly culpable.  Abass is a cleaver man: he was one of the Officials who went along to 'fix' the Constitution of the country- Bellies. He was one of the Officials who dealt with the troubles of Uganda - during the post Amin/Obote/Pre Mussiveni years.  So, why would Sierra Leoneans not expect  good from a cleaver constitutional lawyer like him. He did not only earned his legal ducation in the UK but also in Australia; so he was already internationally exposed at an early age. Why should he be doubted to give leadership to his people? Remember, he went home 'to serve his people"  But, Oh ya! Abass has failed me in many respect!! Why? My friend nor de satisfy! For over 9 years I stayed away from making ant commentary about Abass. His engagement with the NPRC was a matter of personal choice especially when close colleagues with whom he worked in the APC before the coup fled for their lives and had been killed. 'HE IS A MAN OF THE CONSTITUTION' and yet engages himself by serving as Foreign Minister in an illegitimate , treasonable "Boy sojas' Millitary Junta. SHOKING!! But again- Abbass had gone home "to serve his country'. How brave! How bold!. Should we believe Dr. Bundu in his cry for mercy at this ninth hour? Should we see him as a man 'exonorated??? or is it "helped" by the  Ahamed Tejan Kabba Government, which did not allow TRIAL for "THEFT" yes "THEFT" ( well,  OK - Larceny) not to go to TRIAL. So they compromised under a meeting of the heads (Pa Shaki kul am eng ade) not to let BIG MAN GO JAIL!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!.  You see cleverness!! This how it works.  So now, Abass feel confident, bold, brave, to call a Press Conference to "Tell the Truth". So that we all can clear the air, and allow restoration of his dignified image: and in fact, he will not bother to claim restoration of the agreed payment of $105,000 he was 'forced'? to pay back to the  state? because he is so rich now, he does not even need the money: and he believes or pretend to believe that he has the legal right to sue the state to court! Well, I wonder!   I  truly wonder what Pa Kabba feels right now? I deeply wonder what the NPRC Attorney General at the time feels right now? I just wonder what the Chief Justice at the time feels right now? after hearing or reading this comical explanation Abass give to the Press. Sometimes, cleverness could be inimical to the individual...  You see, in UK now, the double jeopardy rules have been changed. Here, cases can be re-opened and suspected criminals can be re-called to court.  This confession by Abass is very intriguing but meaningful. In fact, it is a very helpful statement on two main grounds: First, Abass wants to turn ''a new leaf''. (Or is he?) I welcome that and I am sure a good many Sierra Leoneans would welcome that too.  The Good book preaches REPENTANCE and there is nothing short of a HUMBLE repentance. But, when Repentance is warped up in the clock of pomposity, pig headedness, clouded by a pretence of boldness and verbosity, I do not believe such repentance is worth the paper it is written in, nor that it flows smoothly from the heart of the Repenter: I do not believe the Repentee(s) to whom it is directed, will receive it with open and gladsome heart which in the end, renders such act of bravery worthless, vile and insulting to the people whom the actor wants to impress!! Secondly, Abass's confession (or repentance) will aid the shifting the "chaff from the grain."  We begin to know the true players and their part in this "boy soja" period and game of "WINNIMALOSY " in Offshore Investment Banks. We have started to see WHO IS WHOM! and what role each played. It may take a long while yet; but the road is open and the TRAFFIC HAS BEGAN TO FLOW. A word for the wise - COME OUT NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!! Please read Abass Bundu's Press statement below PRESS STATEMENT IN SIERRA LEONE BY DR. ABASS CHERNOR BUNDU REGARDING THE IMMIGRATION INVESTMENT PROGRAMME AND HIS PROSECUTION FOR LARCENY IN 1996 By Abass Bundu Dec 12, 2005, 20:08   Members of the Press, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this my first Press briefing since I returned home in August last year. I have invited you here today in order to set the record straight on a matter of great public importance, a matter that has been in the public domain for the past nine years. It is the matter of the Immigration Investment Programme (IIP), generally dubbed by the Press as the “Passport Saga”, and my prosecution for larceny in 1996. During the past nine years, much has been written and said about the IIP. I have never been able to get the Press away from harping on what has been perceived as the greatest scandal ever to be associated with our country’s passports. Almost every public mention of my name was viewed in some quarters of the Press as offering an opportunity to remind their readers about the scandal. For others it triggered an invocation of derision. In short, my name became synonymous with the alleged “illegal” sale of Sierra Leone passports in Hong Kong. Only a few publications resisted the temptation of employing defamatory language. Some even went to the extent of insinuating guilt and of wishing to see me put behind bars. I blame no one for this. Most of these publications were more a function of the dynamics of the moment than a deliberate attempt to slur. All I ask now is for the record to be set right so that the general public can get to know the truth. 1996, the year I was arraigned for larceny, should be noted as a particularly difficult period. The brutal war, unleashed by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in 1991, was then ravaging the country, leaving in its trail despicable and unfathomable atrocities, having no parallel in the country’s history. Freetown, which hitherto had escaped the ravages of the war, was rapidly becoming enveloped in a frenzy of anxiety as nervous residents in the outskirts came increasingly under serious threat. Fear and anxiety thus became the order of the day, and lurking just beneath the surface was generalized disaffection for the NPRC junta, which had then failed to make good its promise to rid the country of the rebel war; it had also failed in its desperate bid to succeed itself in office. It was against this backdrop that the new SLPP Government acceded to office in May 1996. The public was demanding vigorous action against corruption and more particularly against rampant allegations of sleaze on the part of the NPRC and their associates. I had served in the NPRC Government as Foreign Secretary for 18 months from November 1993. Even though I had resigned in July 1995 to form my own party, the People’s Progressive Party, and to become its flag bearer for the 1996 Elections, my name continued to be associated with the NPRC. Whatever public opprobrium was reserved for them, it rubbed off on me too. Neither did my outspokenness about the 1996 Elections help matters. On the contrary, it raised my profile and made me stand out as a visible target. And that probably contributed to the circumstances leading to my prosecution in July 1996. The case never actually went to trial. Contrary to Press reports, there was no guilty verdict nor was I sentenced to pay a fine by any Court. Instead, the matter was settled extra-judicially by way of an agreement between the parties. Under that agreement I was required to pay immediately US$105,000, being one-half of the total monies I received from a Mr. Frank Yiu, who was then the Contractor responsible for the execution of the IIP in Hong Kong. The other half (US$105,000) was to be paid later. The assumption the Prosecution made in preferring those charges against me, was that the monies I received had come directly from the IIP; in other words that they were funds belonging to the Government of Sierra Leone which I had compelled Frank Yiu to part with. The key question is: Was the money Government money? I had argued vigorously that the funds were not Government funds. Neither did I at any stage seek to pressurize Mr. Yiu into giving me Government money. I argued, though unsuccessfully, that Mr. Yiu had led me to believe that his contributions to my electioneering campaign fund (totalling US$210,000) came from his private business interests in Hong Kong and worldwide, including South America. I spent all the monies he contributed on my election campaign in 1996 including the purchase of vehicles for travelling in the country, rent for buildings for temporary campaign offices, and on the usual electioneering expenses. Nothing was done that was contrary to law. The fact that Frank Yiu’s contributions did not come from the proceeds of passport sales is plain from his letter to me of 29 March 1995 regarding the means by which the donations would be made by his brother. That letter reads in part: “In addition, please be noted [sic] that I have a personal arrangement with you in US Dollars for TT to London will be done in between April and May, and which will be done by my brother from S. America.” It was solely on this assurance that I had agreed to accept his donations to my campaign. However, I must admit that I had difficulty proving conclusively that the funds I had received from Mr. Yiu had indeed come from sources other than the IIP. I had only his letter of 29 March to show and this was not adequate. New and more convincing evidence was needed. In the circumstances, therefore, I had no choice but to pay under protest. The letter from my Solicitors, dated 12 September 1996, which accompanied the payment, made the point that I had agreed to pay only to underscore the contention that I had had absolutely no criminal intent whatsoever in all my dealings, official or private, with Mr. Frank Yiu. Upon this understanding the Government duly received, by way of a Bank Draft, the sum of US$105,000. So, again, contrary to widespread speculation in the Press, I did not issue a personal cheque to the Government which subsequently bounced. Relationship with Frank Yiu  You might wonder what my relationship with Mr. Frank Yiu was. Why was he ready to give me so much money? Well, let us remember that Mr. Yiu was a prominent businessman in Hong Kong. He had investments worldwide. He also had businesses here in Freetown as well as business associates. I first met him in March 1994 when he visited Freetown for an official briefing. Our second meeting took place in August 1994 when he told me that he had been informed by his business associates about my plans to run for president. He said from what he had been told, he had come to develop respect for my leadership qualities and would like to be associated with my political plans. He also said he was particularly impressed by my desire to forge closer links with the tiger economies of South-East Asia as a possible source of new investment capital for Sierra Leone and asked to be made a key player in that project if I won the presidency. He further explained that although he was not a rich man, he was not without substantial investments in Hong Kong, China and South America, and that his passport business with Sierra Leone constituted only a fraction of his overall business. He then offered to finance my campaign. In the process he made several contributions, all totalling US$210,000. The new evidence  The new conclusive evidence I needed to prove that the funds from Frank Yiu were not Government funds did not come to hand until 1997. Although the documents containing that evidence had been sent to the then Government since early 1996, I did not get to know about them until 1997. This evidence is in the form of two Financial Statements on the IIP that Frank Yiu submitted to the Government on 31 January and 7 February 1996 respectively. They provided the evidence I sought all along. Even though the Financial Statements were addressed to the Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, I did not know they existed. This was because at that point in time I was no longer with the NPRC Government, having resigned from that Government on 14 July 1995. Nor did I know of their existence when I was charged to Court in July 1996. So I could not use them to defend myself at that most crucial moment.  As you will have deduced, monies did change hands in Hong Kong and other places for Sierra Leone passports. Whether we call it a “sale” of passports or a “fee” for administration is really immaterial. The practice of charging some money for new passports or for the renewal of old passports is unexceptional and is indeed universal. Every country in the world demands some sort of payment. Rather what are of great significance are the following three questions: First, who “sold” the passports? Second, why were they sold? And third, what were the proceeds used for? Let me now deal with each of these questions in turn. First, who sold the passports?  Well, again contrary to Press speculations over the past nine years, the passports involved in my case were all sold by the Government of Sierra Leone. The Immigration Investment Programme (IIP), under which passport were sold, had been adopted as State policy by the Government of President Momoh in early 1992. The NPRC Government maintained it after it overthrew President Momoh in April 1992. For national security reasons, and, as will be elaborated later, because of the purpose for which it was conceived, the IIP was operated in the utmost secrecy by both Governments. The public was never informed and they had good reason for that.  Thus seen, the IIP was put in place long before I joined the NPRC Government as Foreign Minister in November 1993. I neither ran the Programme nor had primary responsibility for it. The only major thing I did was to introduce some changes in the implementation of the Programme when I became Foreign Minister. I transferred responsibility for the custody of the passports from Mr. Frank Yiu to a Sierra Leonean indigene, Mr. Sahr Johnny, whom the NPRC Government appointed as Consul-General in Hong Kong and established there a Consulate-General. Frank Yiu was appointed as an Adviser to the Consul-General.  The Programme was based in Hong Kong for a simple reason. Britain’s lease over Hong Kong was about to expire. The citizens of Hong Kong were getting nervous about the future of the Territory once it changed hands from Britain to China, and naturally they were concerned also about their own future. A large number of them decided to emigrate. The wealthy among them were offered citizenship by developed countries such as the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The less wealthy ones sought refuge in other parts of the world, including Africa. In Sierra Leone the Government adopted the IIP. It was aimed at the citizens of Hong Kong who wished to emigrate. For a fee they were offered naturalization and a passport to go with it. They were required to come to Sierra Leone with their wealth and expertise to invest in small-scale industries in order to boost our industrialization programme. So the IIP aimed at achieving two objectives: to attract foreign investors into Sierra Leone and to raise much needed revenue for the country. Why were the passports sold? The plain truth is that the passports were sold to raise money for the prosecution of the war against the RUF rebels. The whole world knew that Sierra Leone was fighting a war against the RUF insurgents. But the IMF, which was a major contributor to the national budget, was not happy that the Government was using the budget to fight the war. It therefore imposed a conditionality. It said that the Government must not use the budget and the support the IMF was providing, to fight the rebel war. Faced with this conditionality, the Government found itself in a serious dilemma: either it used the budget to fight the war and lose the support of the IMF or find new extra-budgetary avenues to raise money. Either way, it could not risk losing the war to the RUF, for the consequences were just too grave to contemplate. So the Government was compelled to look at extra-budgetary avenues to raise money for the prosecution of the war. And the main avenue it found was the “sale” of Sierra Leone passports in Hong Kong and elsewhere. And, as already stated, this sale had started as far back as early 1992. What were the proceeds of passport sales used for? As will be seen from the evidence provided by Mr. Yiu in his Financial Statements, the total income earned from the IIP up to the end of 1995 amounted to US$5,640,890.00 while total expenditures made on behalf of the Government stood at US$6,909,683.78. The deficit of US$1,268,793.78 was financed by way of a loan from Frank Yiu to the Government, using the passports as collateral. These entire funds were disbursed as directed by the NPRC leadership for the purchase of arms and ammunition and other sinews for the prosecution of the war. The next question one might ask is why did I not say all this before, especially when I was charged to court for offences I knew I did not commit?  The answer is two-fold. First I did not have this evidence then. I did not even know it existed. Second, there was no way I could have mounted a defence against the charges without divulging information that was guarded by the State as “top secret”. Imagine if I had gone into the witness box and stated in my evidence in chief that the Government did not have the financial capacity to prosecute the war against the RUF and that it had to depend on the sale of Sierra Leone passports to raise money for that purpose, and that information had got to the knowledge of the RUF while the war was still raging in 1996. Imagine also that the RUF became energized as a result of this disclosure and decided to take Freetown by force. What would have been my fate and that of my family in the hands of the residents of Freetown when they come to know and believe that my disclosures were responsible for energizing the RUF to venture to take the city? It takes little imagination to know what our fate would have been. Remember what happened to the many unfortunate victims whose only crime was that they were suspected, merely suspected, rightly or wrongly, of collaborating with the enemy!  In the circumstances, I opted to protect the State by guarding its secrets. At the same time I also protected the lives of myself and my family by agreeing to the out-of-court settlement mentioned earlier rather than risk making such disclosures at a trial. In the process, I have suffered socially in that I have had to live with the social stigma that the Indictment visited upon me over the past nine years. I also suffered financially in that I had to part with US$105,000. When subsequently new evidence came to hand, represented by the Financial Statements of Frank Yiu, I took immediate steps to bring them to the attention of the Government. On 28 September 2005, a meeting was held with the Honourable Vice-President, in the presence of the current Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, where the exonerative value of the new evidence was accepted. This was followed by an exchange of letters between my humble self and the Honourable Attorney-General dated 30 September and 7 October 2005 respectively. At long last, after nine painful years, the truth about the passport saga has prevailed. And I hope, from now on, my good name, character and reputation will be restored. I wish to take this opportunity, therefore, to record my deep appreciation to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and Vice-President Solomon Berewa for agreeing to accept the new exonerative evidence which in turn will facilitate the restoration of my good name. Such happenings are indeed very rare in Africa. The exoneration is that if, as alleged in the Indictment, it was true I had forced Frank Yiu to part with monies he was holding for the Government, nothing had prevented him from disclosing that fact in his Financial Statements. The fact is that he did not. And that is sufficient evidence to show that the monies he provided to my electioneering campaign fund did not come from the IIP.  What this also means is that it is open to me to claim from the Government a refund of the amount of US$105,000 I paid in 1996. Although it is my legal right so to do, I have been persuaded for a variety of reasons not to pursue that claim. I have agreed, not because I did not need the money – of course I do – but simply because I consider the vindication of my good name and reputation as far more important to me and my family. I thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your kind attention. It is my fervent hope that, with this new development, this matter of the so-called “Passport Saga” will be allowed to rest for good. And if you have published before based on rumours and hearsay resulting in tainting my character reputation, I bear you no grudge. All I ask now is that you be good enough to consider it your professional duty to make amends and repair the damage. *************************************************************************************************** http://www.cocorioko.net/?p=25819 Mother-of-all-corruption exposed in Sierra Leone by Ex-President Kabbah : Maada Bio, Strasser and Abbass Bundu should have been behind bars ! ! ! ****************************************************************************************************** Sierra Leone Opposition Party Embroiled in Squirrelgate Scandal over Passport Sale By SYLVIA OLAYINKA BLYDEN & HER TEAM Mar 30, 2012, 21:21

The main opposition Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) is currently embroiled in what is turning out to be the biggest political corruption scandal to hit Sierra Leone this century. The scandal has been dubbed as the SQUIRRELGATE.

"We need a leader who teaches our youth honesty... we [Bio’s proposed SLPP led Government come November 2012]will not engage in dubious contracts to fleece this country and squirrel the loot away in foreign bank accounts". - JULIUS MAADA BIO IN HIS MAIDEN SPEECH (September 2011)

The Green NPRC-SLPP Squirrel

The quote above is relevant to the ongoing saga. The scandal has been dubbed the Squirrelgate scandal in honour of the above words from the mouth of Julius Maada Bio, the SLPP’s presidential candidate who was also the Deputy Chairman in the NPRC military junta which governed Sierra Leone from 1992 to 1993 to 1994 to 1995 to 1996.

In his first address to the voting public upon his election as SLPP presidential candidate, Bio spoke of criminals fleecing from the State to "squirrel" such funds in foreign bank accounts. The Squirrelgate Scandal concerns squirreling of our country’s money into NPRC junta pockets and foreign bank accounts over a prolonged period spanning years.

We are publishing copies of three of the numerous documents currently in our possession. The first one is the authenticated, signed and stamped Statement of Disbursement of Funds directly to certain individuals or their proxies.

The second is a sworn statement from Hong Kong citizen Frank Yiu saying that he personally handed over US$50,000 in cash [from the sale of our country’s passports] to the then newly sworn in Deputy NPRC Chairman Julius Maada Bio in June 1993. It is interesting to note that this was the month in which late SAJ Musa was cleverly manipulated out of office and replaced by Bio. All information currently in possession of the investigators show SAJ Musa was never involved in the scam to squirrel our country’s money. His name appears nowhere in the Statement of Disbursement of Funds.

Strasser was involved. According to documents in our possession, Strasser collected US$200,000 in cash from the proceeds of the passport sales during the time SAJ Musa was still his deputy. However, no evidence exists that SAJ Musa ever collected money from Frank Yiu. Until this day, no one has been able to give a credible explanation as to why SAJ Musa was forced out of the country and replaced with Bio. How come Bio received US$50,000 immediately SAJ Musa was forced out? SAJ Musa was known to be a strict disciplinarian but whether he was prone to be corrupt is not known.

Late SAJ Musa: NPRC's Disciplinarian

The third is a set of two documents showing bank transfers of another sum of US$50,000 from our passport sales proceeds paid by Frank Yiu into Maada Bio’s secret Channel Islands TSB bank account. That was in December 1994. Bio had by then spent 18 months in power as Deputy NPRC Head since he replaced SAJ Musa. He was to later replace Strasser as well.

This newspaper has many more of such documents. Friday March 23rd 2012 was the anniversary of the day the first bullet was fired in Bomaru in a war that came about mainly because of Squirrel Politicians and their squirreling of funds into foreign bank accounts. On that day, Awareness Times received a bundle of legal and bank documents in a sealed envelope anonymously delivered to our offices with a message inside simply saying: "In the name of this sacred March 23rd date, please do not let the people of Sierra Leone be fooled a second time by squirrels and grun-pigs. Examine these documents and do the correct thing for Mama Salone. Expose them in your widely read and well respected newspaper".

Awareness Times spent the last one week trying to verify and authenticate these documents and we can now confirm these are the documents used to indict former NPRC Foreign Minister Dr. Abass Bundu but for which he had said he was exonerated in December 2005. These documents which are now floating in other media houses show money transfers to Channel Islands Account of P. Banga Investments and also in the name of Julius Maada Bio. They include incriminating bank documents and Bank Transfers from Hong Kong to Ghana and from Hong Kong to Channel Islands over a period spanning many months between the years 1993 and 1996.

They also include illicit payments from New York’s BANK AMERICA into Bio’s foreign bank accounts. Similarly, banks like the famous HSBC, TSB (Lloyds of London) and Midlands Bank (St. Helier, Jersey), Bank of East Asia and others are all shown in the huge paper trail of documents highlighting illicit and criminal cash flows into secret foreign bank accounts held in name JULIUS MAADA BIO or in name of P. BANGA INVESTMENTS LTD, which is the company the former SLPP Government had alleged was a front for Julius Maada Bio who is interestingly now SLPP presidential candidate.

Apart from the huge volume of documents detailing the secret bank transfers into Maada Bio’s foreign bank accounts this paper also has in our possession, the Legal Report to Sierra Leone Cabinet from the then Attorney General’s Office (dated September 1996). This report was prepared and submitted shortly after Bundu was charged for larceny of State money which Bundu was accused of taking into his pocket rather than use it for the judicious use of development the State. Here is a section of what the SLPP Government Cabinet Paper says:- "Out of the passport transactions relating to Frank Yiu, Captain Strasser received a total of US$602,000; Brigadier Bio received US$380,000 and Dr. Abass Bundu got US$210,000...".

Another section of the SLPP Cabinet Paper of 1996 states: "These amounts were paid at different times into designated foreign accounts or in cash. In the case of Captain Strasser, his own share was paid to him personally or into a designated Swiss Account. Brigadier Bio had his paid into the Meridien Bank, Accra Ghana or into an account in Channel Islands, UK. Dr. Abass Bundu’s share was paid to him partly in cash or by transfer to his London account. Dr. Abass Bundu now faces trial for his own role in this transaction. Captain Strasser and Brigadier Bio would have been in the dock with him but the facts became known when both were now well outside the jurisdiction".

The Statement of Disbursement of Funds. This is part of the huge bundle of Sworn Affidavits handed over to the SLPP Kabbah Government in July 1996 by Frank Yiu.

A Certfied Statement which was part of the massive bundle of Sworn Affidavits given to the Kabbah SLPP Government in July 1996

Two documents concerning the payment of US$50,000 into Julius Maada Bio's secret offshore account in the UK's Channel Islands (Account Number 503400 with TSB Channel Islands)

It can be recalled that a famous Anti-Corruption Lawyer now retired in London, R.H.O. Robbin-Coker had written to the SLPP’s Presidential Candidate shortly after his maiden speech demanding answers to all these questions but Robbin-Coker had been ignored.
[ CLICK HERE FOR ROBBIN-COKER LETTER ]

It is not very clear if Bio will continue to ignore the calls for clarification now that all these documents are now out in the open.

However, unlike Maada Bio who has simply ignored the calls, Abass Bundu had respected Sierra Leoneans enough to face them and give his own explanation of the transactions back then. It can be recalled that on Tuesday December 13th 2005 at the Sierra Leone News Agency (SLENA) offices at Wallace Johnson Street in Freetown, Dr. Bundu had called up a Press Conference in which he had accepted that he indeed received such monies as laid out by Frank Yiu, a Hong Kong citizen. However, in Bundu’s prepared Statement as read out on that day, he denied that the monies he received were from the amounts meant for the State. In the process of explaining what Bundu described as "my prosecution for larceny in 1996", this is what he had said back in December 2005 about the issue:

"You might wonder what my relationship with Mr. Frank Yiu was. Why was he ready to give me so much money? Well, let us remember that Mr. Yiu was a prominent businessman in Hong Kong. He had investments worldwide. He also had businesses here in Freetown as well as business associates. I first met him in March 1994 when he visited Freetown for an official briefing. Our second meeting took place in August 1994 when he told me that he had been informed by his business associates about my plans to run for president. He said from what he had been told, he had come to develop respect for my leadership qualities and would like to be associated with my political plans. He also said he was particularly impressed by my desire to forge closer links with the tiger economies of South-East Asia as a possible source of new investment capital for Sierra Leone and asked to be made a key player in that project if I won the presidency. He further explained that although he was not a rich man, he was not without substantial investments in Hong Kong, China and South America, and that his passport business with Sierra Leone constituted only a fraction of his overall business. He then offered to finance my campaign. In the process he made several contributions, all totalling US$210,000".

Dr. Abass Bundu confessed to receiving the US$210,000.[CLICK HERE FOR THAT CONFESSION] He did not deny the authenticity of documents showing the monies entering into his bank account. He however respected Sierra Leonean voters enough to try to give an explanation of why he received such cash into his foreign bank accounts. It is not clear if Julius Maada Bio will respect Sierra Leoneans enough to speak to us on the issue. Attempts by journalists to get Mr. Bio's own side received death threats this week from Bio's supporters at the opposition headquarters.

If Mr. Maada Bio does speak, it is not clear if he will try to deny ownership of his secret foreign Bank Accounts in Ghana and Channel Islands or if he will confess that indeed he is nothing but a big human NPRC Squirrel now running as SLPP presidential candidate.

The Green NPRC-SLPP Squirrel

[ TO BE CONTINUED ]

IS JULIUS MAADA BIO A STATE MONEY THIEF? THE MONEY TRAIL BEGINS

Where has all the money gone? Ariogbooo......fendem, fendem!!

Please CLICK link below
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=326409397422497&set=a.132650853465020.25192.100001603180299&type=1
Thanks to Dr Sylvia Blyden for this update 29 March 2012
Now we begin to know where all the monies that came into the hands of the NPRC post 1992 COUP went.. The IMF, WORLD BANK, EUROPEAN FUND  and such like International funding bodies were in 'post haste' in releasing large amounts of monies to the Military Government of Captain Strasser and his "PIKIN SOJAS", when they overthrew the legitimate government of President Joseph Saidu Momoh. I recall even a $50 million Special Drawing Rights (SDR) facility, which had been approved during President Siaka Stevens time in 1983 or thereabout, (when Hon Salia Jusu Sherriffe was Finance Mininter,) frozen all that time was also released to them. Equally a Deutsche Mark 70 million by the Germans, for which the City Council was connected..
 The records of all those heavy amounts must now be investigated. These 'boy soldiers' of which Maada Bio became a one time second in command, and men like John Benjamin must account for these funds which were dissipated (FITYFATA) with no trace until now that we begin to see where these monies went.

There was no proper control of these high class financing, and these BORBOR SOLDIERS simply had a free hand to ROB the state with no fear or thought. Yes, they instituted Saturday cleaning of the streets, and engaged in prayer days every now and then. They spent some money in projects like building/re-furbishing Round Abouts and painted images of some past heroes, here and there and driving up and down in big cars wasting monies on 'bleached skin" (washing) girls and showing off.. Now we begin to know and see the PAPER WORK of the slick ways these International Finance bodies developing funds where coveted and hidden in overseas accounts of these TIFF MAN DEM. So what do we do now?
 Looking closely at the document below, provided by Awareness Time Proprietor, Dr Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, the details can clearly be seen of this one transaction - date of transfer, 9 December 1994; from Overseas Trust Bank Limited. This does not look like a Sierra Leone based Bank - perhaps a Hung Kong Bank. The account number at this first leg of the transaction  shows 003101601; The name of the officer seems to be  a Mr FRANK YIU. The Bank reference number as: 60042/60023 530 with Julius Maada Bio's name clearly visible in the document. The amount is stated as: HKD 387,000 (Three hundred and eighty seven thousand Hung Kong Dollars - converted at the rate of 7.7400HKD to US$1( now this was 1992).

QUESTION? WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM ORIGINALLY, THAT WENT INTO THE OVERSEAS TRUST BANK? This appears to be a TRANSIT Bank not the INITIATING Bank.

 The second LEG of the transaction, is a movement from Overseas Trust Bank Limited in Hung Kong to The Beneficiary's Bank, the TSB ( Trustee Savings Bank, (NOW PART OF LLOYDS BANK - and now owned by British Tax Payesrs and British Government):

 The address is clearly seen as TSB Channel  Island Limited, OFFSURE CENTRE, PO BOX No 597, ST. HELIER, JERSEY, JE48 XW.  ACCOUNT NUMBER 503400 -  NAME: JULIIUS MAADA BIO. 

Note that this account number is different from the one in the Overseas Trust Bank. These accounts are created to facilitate TAX AVOIDANCE - hence OFFSURE - They are TAX HEAVENS . 

It is clear from this document that the TSB Jersey holds a correspondent account for the Overseas Trust Bank with account number 3101601-  The instruction       

from the Hung Kong Bank, to debit their account held at TSB Jersey can be visualise at the bottom of the document with a check box "TICKED"

 On the bottom right side of the document from Overseas Trust Bank Limited (marked "Remittance" - at the top right) one can see the words " APPLICANT'S SIGNATURE followed by the words Champion Fund Investment Limited" with two  'Authorised Signatures' which cannot be read easily and a telephone number (I guess it's Hung Kong's) 8020163.

Questions? Who are Champions Fund Investments Limited? Were they transfer/transaction facilitators or were they part of the  deal? Where did the original monies come from that they dealt with and pass on through the Two Banks to end up in Julius Maada Bio's Account in Jersey? How many more of such Transactions existed?  What was their cut/commission on these deals percentage wise? 

This is only the beginning just a scratch on the surface. The krokro go big (the wound will enlarge when the real truth emerge.

IS THIS PART OF THE MONEY BIO USED TO BUY HOUSES IN NEW JERSEY and SPAIN?
  WE GO FIND OUT.




PLEASE CLICK LINK TO READ DR BLYDEN'S FACE BOOK POST ANS POPULAR COMMENTS

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=326409397422497&set=a.132650853465020.25192.100001603180299&type=1

By Dr. Sylvia Blyden - Face Book Post


Sierra Leone Opposition Threatens to Kill Journalists Before Polls: Staunch members of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) have yesterday promised that come November 17th 2012, they will be embarking on a mission to kill journalists they perceive as being against their party. The SLPP members made the threats yesterday whilst molesting two journalists from the Awareness Times who had gone to the party offices to seek clarification from Julius Maada Bio concerning monies alleged to have been stolen from the State and paid into his overseas accounts at the time he was Deputy Head of State in the NPRC military junta. (ONE OF NUMEROUS BANKING DOCUMENTS CURRENTLY IN POSSESSION OF AWARENESS TIMES IS ACCOMPANYING THIS UPDATE)
The Awareness Times had initially fruitlessly tried to contact Mr. Bio on his phone lines but having failed to get him, we got his Personal Assistant John Tucker who said his boss was “tied up” and “busy” but he would find time to speak with him.
Awareness Times then informed Tucker that we were sending two journalists and we dispatched Edward Tommy and cub reporter Mariama Bundu to speak with Mr. Bio.
It was whilst the two journalists were patiently waiting to talk to Mr. Bio that they were pounced upon by supporters of Mr. Bio who accused them of being spies listening to the SLPP secrets. They clearly knew Tommy to be a journalist and when he reminded them that he was waiting to speak with Bio and he was from Awareness Times, they went enraged and ordered Tommy and Mariama to leave the premises. They frog-marched them all the way down the three sets of stairways with one of them even bundling up Tommy’s trousers whilst shouting and threatening them.
They rudely insulted the journalists all the way to their party gates whilst openly making threats that they had certain journalists they would be killing as soon as they won the elections in November.
“We just dey wait for the bell for ring!!” a violent SLPP lady promised as she said they will deal with journalists as soon as the bell is announced that they have won the elections.
Many citizens are fearful that with the growing violence originating from the SLPP during which they do not even spare their members, the Sierra Leone Police needs to be on proper alert and with a good state of mind to avert any pogrom and massacre of citizens especially journalists. Meanwhile, most independent journalists no longer have confidence in the ability of the President of Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) to protect them from SLPP partisans as he is widely believed to be heavily compromised on the side of the SLPP. Yesterday, the SLAJ Offices were closed and when journalists phoned up Umaru Fofana the president, he said he was too busy attending to a report he was filing for the BBC to attend to SLAJ matters.
It can be recalled that the opposition has made a lot of noise over the Government’s decision to arm the Sierra Leone police after years of the police using obsolete weapons. An arms embargo on the country was lifted in late 2010 which was when the Government started a process to order the weapons to ensure the country’s internal security was well guarded.
“Only criminals and murderers and those planning to undertake very bad things will oppose a country arming its legitimate police force. If the SLPP was not full of criminals and thieves, they would not be fearful of armed policemen,” said Mohamed Bockarie Fofana, a youth activist from Karina, Bombali District. His sentiments are being widely re-echoed all over the country.

REBUILDING SIERRA lEONE'S ARMY- WITH CONFIDENCE

 

CLICK THIS LINK- WATCH MARK DOYLE'S (BBC) THE  REPORT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17187423

THE SALONE VAGABONE KING,,,SAD- ( NEW STATESMAN)

TAKE OVER DAY OF COUP April 29 1992



 Top of Form


The vagabon  king

Simon Akam Published 02 February 2012



When 25-year-old Valentine Strasser seized power in Sierra Leone in 1992, he became the world’s youngest head of state. Today he lives with his mother and spends his days drinking gin by the roadside. What went wrong?

SITTING IN STATE HOUSE

TAKE OVER -D DAY

 


There are two ways to drive inland from Freetown. The first is to go through the eastern, poorer quarters of the Sierra Leonean capital. There decrepit vehicles jam narrow streets lined with mouldering clapboard houses. With such heavy congestion, it can take many hours to make the journey. The alternative is to take the so-called mountain road. You drive up into the hills, past the camp of the British army-led training team left over from Tony Blair's little war in 2000. Soon the tarmac ends and a dirt road threads past straggling villages into the forest. The track of reddish laterite – which bypasses the city and its traffic – is treacherous after rain, and traces a route down into a broad valley. A mile or so before it rejoins the main highway leading inland, a side road branches off to the left through a quiet village. At the far end of the settlement stands a faded sheet-metal advertisement for Goodyear tyres. And there, most afternoons, a tall man with close-cropped, greying hair sits on an open porch by the side of the road, often dressed in just a pair of shorts. If you arrive late in the day he may be drinking gin from a plastic sachet. His name is Valentine Strasser; he is 45, and was once the youngest head of state in the world. It is ten years since the end of the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone. In 2007 power changed hands at the ballot box – and yet, to the outside world, the iconography of that long war – child soldiers, violent amputations and conflict diamonds – is ineradicable. The story of Strasser, who seized power in a military coup at the age of 25 in 1992 and ruled for four years until he was deposed by the same method, is unusual even by the experience of West African dictatorships. His improbable rise to executive power and his precipitous fall to roadside penury is a parable of the human consequences of premature kingship. Strasser says he was born on 15 September 1966 in Freetown. His father was a teacher, his mother a small-time businesswoman. After attending the Sierra Leone Grammar School (founded in 1845), he became an army officer, serving in neighbouring Liberia as part of a regional peacekeeping mission, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). Like Sierra Leone, Liberia was established as a colony of freed slaves. Civil war had broken out there in 1989, and in 1991 ECOMOG was attempting to secure order in the capital, Monrovia. "Fighting was going on every corner from three factions," Strasser told me one evening, speaking softly and with a slight lilt. After seven months in Liberia, he returned home. The war followed him. In March 1991, rebel fighters crossed over from Liberia into the remote eastern part of the country. This incursion of as many as 2,000 men, most of whom were on loan from the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, marked the beginning of Sierra Leone's decade-long conflict. Led by Foday Sankoh, the rebels came to be known as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Sankoh was a former army corporal and one-time jobbing photographer and, like others among the initial RUF leadership, he had received training at al-Mathabh al-Thauriya al-Alamiya, Muammar al-Gaddafi's World Revolutionary Headquarters in Benghazi, Libya. By 1991 Sierra Leone was close to ruin. After independence from Britain in 1961, there had been a brief period of relatively functional democracy under the leadership of Sir Milton Margai. He died in 1964 and was succeeded by his less respected stepbrother Albert, who disbursed vital positions in government to people of the Mende tribe regardless of qualifications. The decline accelerated under Siaka Stevens, a trade unionist who was elected in 1967 but did not become prime minister until the following year because of a series of coups. In 1971, Stevens declared himself president. Charming but spectacularly corrupt, he systematically degraded state institutions and operated a system of personal patronage. He plundered Sierra Leone's diamond wealth and even entered into negotiations with an American company to have toxic waste dumped in the country in exchange for a fee of $25m. “At the age of 80, Stevens left office with an estimated fortune of US$500m," says Sareta Ashraph, a London-based lawyer formerly at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone who is now working on a history of the civil war. "The sheer corruption and violent repression of the Stevens regime extinguished the hopes of an entire generation and laid the foundation for the country's brutal civil war." Following riots in Freetown, Stevens stepped down in 1985. Two years later, at a ceremony held in the grounds of parliament, a local preacher compared the former head of state's reign to a "17-year plague of locusts" in an address that was broadcast on national radio. The next president was Joseph Momoh, a military officer. Despite his initial promises of reform, corruption persisted under him. He acquired the nickname Dandogo, which means "idiot" in the language of the Limba people of northern Sierra Leone. By 1991, Momoh had been in power for six years and the nation was ripe for revolt.

Wounded in action

On Strasser's return from Liberia, he joined a unit fighting the rebel incursion in the east. The conditions for the government troops were wretched. Logistical support was poor, supplies of weapons and ammunition were limited and there was scant medical provision. On 1 May 1991, he received a shrapnel wound to the leg while defending a bridge.
“I was inside a bunker and I got blasted," he said. "It was a shell that actually landed on the sandbags." On another occasion when we spoke he said: "No casevac [casualty evacuation] procedures were made. In terms of helicopters or ambulances to shift the casualties . . . the problem was not with the level of training, but with the equipment that was available and the manpower. My disgruntlement stemmed from the fact that after I got wounded in action, I could not be evacuated, either by an ambulance or a helicopter."
Aware that they were fighting a war that their political masters would not resource properly, Strasser and other junior officers began plotting a coup. On 29 April 1992, they launched Operation Daybreak, raiding the office of the president in central Freetown as well as the lavish old presidential lodge off Spur Road in the West End of the city. They found President Momoh hiding in the bathroom of the lodge, wearing a dressing gown. He was bundled into an army helicopter and taken over the border to Guinea.
Strasser emerged as the public face of the uprising, in part because of his language skills – he spoke English well enough to read out a statement on the radio. As a captain, he was also of a higher rank than his co-conspirators. Some argue, too, that Strasser got the top post because those around him felt that he could be manipulated easily. "He was chosen in spite of, not because of, his leadership capabilities," says Joe Alie, a professor of history at Fourah Bay College in Freetown and the author of a 2007 history of the country since independence.
Joseph Opala, an American historian who first came to Sierra Leone in 1974 as a Peace Corps volunteer and has spent much of his adult life in the country, witnessed the wild early days of the new regime. Avuncular and bearded, he runs a project to restore the former British slave fortress on Bunce Island, near Freetown. Shortly after the 1992 coup, Opala was rounded up by soldiers and taken to State House, the white-walled seat of power in the city centre that bears an odd resemblance to a lighthouse.
The windows in the president's office had been shot out. Momoh's staff stood erect, in abject terror. Sitting around wearing camouflage fatigues and Ray-Ban sunglasses were the young officers who had mounted the insurrection. They were cleaning their Kalashnikovs and were stoned.
Strasser turned to Opala. "A wan know if America go recognise we gobment?" he said, speaking in Krio, the Sierra Leonean lingua franca. Krio is built on an English chassis but has a distinct grammatical structure and uses borrowed words from a plethora of other sources. In response to
Strasser's question ("I want to know if America will recognise our government?"), Opala asked him in turn if he had spoken to the American ambassador. The new leader replied that he had, but that he had not understood what the diplomat had told him. "En English too big," he said. "A no undastan natin way e talk."
An extraordinary scene ensued. At Strasser's direction, Opala left State House and walked through deserted streets to the US embassy, which at the time lay one block away. There he told a jumpy marine guard that he had a personal message for the ambassador from the coup leaders. He was allowed in and explained to the head of mission that the heads of the new government wanted to know if Washington would recognise it. The ambassador, a black American named Johnny Young, said that he had spoken at length to Strasser and had outlined the position of the US administration – that in general it did not acknowledge regimes installed by force but, in this instance, because the previous government had also not been democratically elected and considering the dire condition of the country, it was prepared to make an exception.

Ukrainian connection

In the early days, Captain Strasser's coup was popular. There were promises of a fresh start for the country. Young people mobilised to keep Freetown clean. Celebratory murals and other street art flourished. The new rulers of Sierra Leone called themselves the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). Strasser was the council's chairman.
For all the jubilation, there was still a war to fight. Out in the bush, the army continued fighting the rebels. The junior officers who formed the NPRC had experienced the wretched conditions of the government troops. They wanted to improve matters, so besides tripling the size of the army, they went shopping.
There have been few better periods in history to buy guns than in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had disintegrated, leaving huge arsenals in the hands of often unpaid and unsupervised officers. Dollars went a long way and official documentation was circumnavigable. Crucially, too, Sierra Leone's new leaders had a Ukrainian connection. During the cold war, the Soviet Union had funded scholarships for students from the developing world. Sierra Leoneans were among those who took up the chance to study in the USSR. One such was Steven Bio, who had studied in Kiev. A cousin of Julius Maada Bio, a member of the new junta, he had useful connections with gunrunners in Ukraine. He would be the go-between.
However, as the arms bazaar began to thrive abroad, the jubilation that had greeted Strasser's assumption of power at home began to diminish. In October 1992, the RUF took Koidu Town, capital of Kono District in the diamond-mining east. The capture of the town marked a step up in the conflict. In Freetown, the NPRC government announced that it had uncovered an attempted coup and disarmed the instigators. Executions followed on a beach on the outskirts of the city, but the 29 people executed were considered to be innocent, and soon afterwards Strasser declared a nationwide period of mourning. "To people who were politically savvy, what it meant was there was no coherent government," Opala told me. "The conclusion was obvious – no one was in charge." (Nineteen years later, the mention of the executions stirred Strasser to anger. "Fuck off, man. In Texas they kill people every day," he said when I pressed him on the subject.) Power in Sierra Leone was now in the hands of a group of very young men. "The children are running the country," it was said. A photograph of Strasser at the 1993 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Limassol, Cyprus, shows a young man in sunglasses and a T-shirt, emblazoned with the words "Sunny Days in Cyprus". There were parties, too. Strasser made Valentine's Day a great national celebration, along with Bob Marley's birthday. The junta favoured pale-skinned women, creating a craze for bleaching among girls in Freetown. Women who tried to lighten their skin tone with chemicals were called "wonchee girls". Older Sierra Leoneans still mention that phrase readily when asked about their impressions of the NPRC. But perhaps the most telling indication of the onset of decadence in Strasser himself was his choice of accommodation.
Kabasa Lodge is in many ways the embodiment of all that is wrong with post-independence Sierra Leone. Built by the kleptocratic Siaka Stevens, it is a monumental structure the size of a missile silo or respectable late-medieval castle, and squats on a hilltop in Juba, in the West End of Freetown, with expansive views both out over the Atlantic and to the forested hills of the peninsula south of the city. It was here that Strasser chose to live. The 1992 coup had decapitated the command structure of the army; brigadiers were expected to take their orders from captains and lieutenants. In the countryside, both rebels and the poorly trained soldiers were often more interested in looting property from civilians than in fighting each other. The line between the resistance and the rebellion became blurred, reflected in the neologism "sobel" – soldier by day, rebel by night. By late 1993, though, the much-enlarged government army was close to defeating the rebels. In December Strasser called a ceasefire, but that turned out to be a mistake: the RUF regrouped and began setting up jungle bases around the country in 1994 and 1995. The rebels were a threat once more and the government was losing control.

Glittering prizes

In the south, the RUF attacked the facilities of Sierra Rutile, a company mining titanium ore, cutting off a crucial source of state revenue. The rebels set up a base in the town of Moyamba which put them within a day's striking distance of Freetown. Vehicle ambushes left few people willing to travel upcountry. With the security situation deteriorating, the NPRC was becoming increasingly unpopular. It was then that Strasser turned to foreign fighters. White mercenaries are a charged subject in Africa, conjuring up a host of associations, from "Mad" Mike Hoare in the Congo of the 1960s to Richard Burton and Roger Moore in the 1978 film The Wild Geese and, more recently, the farce of the 2004 "wonga coup" in Equatorial Guinea. However, in Sierra Leone, shortly after South Africa's first multiracial elections in 1994, ex-apartheid enforcers re-engaged as soldiers of fortune and ended up saving huge numbers of lives. They nearly saved the country, too. In February 1995, the NPRC engaged the services of a company called Gurkha Security Guards (GSG), which employed Nepalese ex-British-army troops led by an American, Robert MacKenzie. MacKenzie had fought in Vietnam and, in spite of an arm injury sustained there, he later passed selection for the Rhodesian SAS. He also worked as a correspondent for Soldier of Fortune magazine. His masterminding of GSG's involvement in Sierra Leone was a debacle: he was quickly ambushed along with Strasser's aide-de-camp, Abu Tarawalli. It is still not known for sure if those responsible were the rebels, or whether he was betrayed by Sierra Leonean army soldiers he was meant to be assisting. After MacKenzie went missing, his wife asked Al J Venter – a writer with a long interest in mercenary affairs – to visit Sierra Leone to investigate what had happened. Venter discovered that a group of nuns had also been captured and taken to the camp where MacKenzie was held. The nuns were eventually released, but before then they saw the American strung up, and his heart cut out. The next group of white mercenaries to land in Sierra Leone was Executive Outcomes, which blazed a trail for private military companies of the modern era. Composed the civil wapredominantly of former South African special forces troops, Executive Outcomes was active in Angola during r there, fighting both for and against Jonas Savimbi's South African-funded rebel army, Unita. The brokers of the deal that brought Executive Outcomes to Sierra Leone included Simon Mann, later of the botched "wonga coup"; Tony Buckingham, who now runs Heritage Oil, a company whose prospectus hints at the risk that the media may mention his previous mercenary adventures; and Eeben Barlow, a former South African special forces officer. The role of Executive Outcomes was to combat the rebels. The mercenaries would be paid in diamond concessions and cash. They arrived in Sierra Leone in small numbers – about a hundred on the ground at any one time. Most of the operatives were black but theleadership was white. They used helicopters, they had their own logistical train and they were fearsomely competent. "These people knew Africa," Venter said. "They set up their own supply units . . . they brought everything with them. They drove [the rebels] well away from Freetown, then they launched an operation into Kono. They did it; they turned the war around in record time." Joseph Opala recalled how Executive Outcomes would give a radio to each of the paramount chiefs, the leaders originally appointed from the ranks of local kings and queens by British colonial administrators at the end of the 19th century. "They said: 'If you call us we will be there in 15 minutes.' And they were." The mercenaries achieved what thousands of UN peacekeepers five years later were unable to do: they stopped the war. "At a total cost of $35m [just one-third of the government's annual defence budget], the fighting in Sierra Leone had ceased and over one million displaced persons returned to their homes," wrote P W Singer of the Brookings Institution in his book Corporate Warriors: the Rise of the Privatised Military Industry. “They did what they were here to do – that I can assure you," Strasser told me. "In fact, fighting stopped. It was a war machine that was capable of handling the security difficulties there at the time." But the mercenaries were soon forced out of Sierra Leone by other countries' disapproval. There was substantial international support for a peace accord that was negotiated in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, in 1996, and the RUF made withdrawal of foreign forces a provision of signing it. Executive Outcomes left in January 1997. Without a disarmament programme in place, the Abidjan agreement proved ineffective. Clashes continued and after another military coup in May 1997 the violence escalated once more. In January 1999, the war reached its nadir when RUF fighters sacked Freetown in Operation No Living Thing. As for Strasser, he was deposed in a palace coup on 16 January 1996. He had gone to inspect a passing-out parade at the military trainin academy in Benguema, less than 30 miles from Freetown. In the afternoon he went, without a substantial security escort, to a meeting at the defence headquarters at Cockerill, back in the capital city. There he was overpowered and bundled into a helicopter and flown to Guinea, just as had happened to Joseph Momoh four years earlier. Strasser's successor, the leader of this second coup, was Julius Maada Bio. The new leader was still only in his early thirties. When I asked Strasser why his reign ended as it did, he refused to accept there had been a coup. He claimed he had merely stepped down at the end of the ten years of military service for which he had signed up. That statement is fantastical, and must be discounted.

 

DEJECTED

Anything for a quiet life

The post-deposition period is perhaps the strangest in Strasser's unusual life, taking him from West Africa to Coventry in the West Midlands. When the international community had negotiated with the NPRC over the reintroduction of civilian rule, one of the incentives offered to members of the junta in return for relinquishing power was the opportunity to study in the west. And even though Strasser had eventually lost power by less graceful means, he was able to take up this chance. Warwick University's decision to consider admitting him was controversial. "When it became known who he was, there was a lot of disquiet in the law school and the university," recalls Roger Leng, an expert in criminal law at Warwick who later taught Strasser. There was a fierce internal row over whether he should be allowed to enter as a student, despite assurances from reputable sources to the university that Strasser was not responsible for human rights violations. Eventually he was accepted and took a foundation course to compensate for his lack of formal qualifications. The intention was that he would then progress to a law degree. Leng was surprised when he met Strasser for the first time. "He was quiet. I don't think really he was equipped to study at this level," he said. "I'd expected a swaggering, arrogant guy and he was quite the opposite." Strasser's second life as a civilian in England did not go well. His unwanted celebrity was a problem. He took up residence in an anonymous red-brick terraced house at 47 Poplar Road in suburban Earlsdon in Coventry, the city nearest the university, but the local and national press began to take an interest in him. He claims, too, that his stipend was inadequate. It even turned out that among Strasser's fellow students in 1996 was a niece of one of the victims of the extrajudicial killings of December 1992. According to him, the woman spoke against him on television and lobbied against him. The archives of the Boar, Warwick University's student newspaper, mention inquiries launched into his presence. "The university's belief that Strasser's studies will contribute to the democratisation process has been attacked by those who consider that an individual with such a brutal background should not be afforded acceptance within wider society," the Boar reported in October 1996. Later he had an unsuccessful affair with a supermarket checkout girl. "She knew who I was, because the papers in Coventry had things about me," Strasser said. "She knew I was a former dictator." Warwick University closed its file on Strasser in January 1998. A spokesman for the university, Peter Dunn, believes he left campus before then. "My recollection was that he wrote to the university staff saying that he was leaving," Dunn said. "One of his concerns was that he was fed up with his history in Sierra Leone being constantly brought up." Strasser corroborated that account. "I saw front-page articles saying 'former dictator' and 'human rights violations'," he said. "It was impossible." After dropping out of Warwick he moved to London, but there he found no peace. Albert Mahoi, a Sierra Leonean who goes by the nickname of Carlos, was running a business in south-east London that offered cosmetics, money transfers and international calls when he met Strasser. Mahoi recalled encountering him at a nightclub in Camberwell; another Sierra Leonean exile was abusing him and Mahoi felt he had to intervene. “I said: 'Don't do that – he was our president,'" Mahoi told me. "I talked to Strasser, I told him to calm down." He bought the former head of state a bottle of Courvoisier. "He was stressed up; you know when someone loses everything. There was no respect for him." With the Guardian newspaper questioning why a one-time West African strongman was living in London, Strasser left the country. The Home Office would not comment on whether his visa had been revoked. In December 2000, he went briefly to the Gambia and then back to Sierra Leone. And he is still there.

Moving with the times

The civil war finally ended in 2002 after a Blair-led British military intervention stiffened a floundering UN peacekeeping mission. The peace has held, and in November the country will hold its third multiparty election since the war's end. Large iron-ore mining projects are coming on line, and the IMF predicts massive GDP growth of 51.4 per cent this year. Yet Sierra Leone remains impoverished; it ranks 180th (out of 187 countries) in the UN's Human Development Index and per-capita GDP stands at just $325 a year. The country also has a large pool of marginalised ex-combatants and other young men who continue to pose a threat to stability. Despite enormous expenditure of foreign aid, corruption remains endemic and progress on infrastructure frustratingly slow. Desmond Luke is a former chief justice who trained at both Cambridge and Oxford. "One of my biggest sadnesses is when I travel out of Sierra Leone and I come back," he told me recently at his house in Freetown. "The only change one really does see is it seems to get dirtier." Some of the figures from the war years are still in politics, too. Maada Bio, who deposed Strasser and was briefly head of state, is now the candidate for the main opposition party in the November presidential election. Strasser lives quietly with his mother, Beatrice, in the house he built at Grafton, east of Freetown. The once-elegant white villa is run-down and the walls are stained. Across the potholed road stand the burnt-out ruins of another house that Strasser had built while in office, but which was bombed by Nigerian fighter jets during the civil war. He receives a government pension of 200,000 leones (£30) a month. That is a recent improvement on the 64,000 leones (£9.40) he used to get. He is desperately poor and does not even have a mobile phone to hand as he sits by the roadside in the afternoons. "It's a new set of circumstances and I've got to accept them," he said of his life with his mother. I asked Sheka Tarawalie, Sierra Leone's deputy minister of information, why the former leader receives such meagre support. "You know, Strasser was not an elected head of state," Tarawalie said. "That is one of the problems. He came in as a military man."

"Bad dictators"

One evening last summer, at the start of the rainy season, I arranged to meet Strasser for a final dinner. I went to see him with a friend and a British researcher resident in Freetown. We drove over the mountain road and picked Strasser up from his house. He sat in the front seat of my Land Rover, wearing trainers and cut-off jeans. At his suggestion, we went to eat at a Safecon petrol station on the main road upcountry. There we sat at a table outside in the evening light. It did not go well. He was drunk at the start of the meal and became agitated. When I raised his time at Warwick, he raged at me – I was his assassin, he said. I was the president of America. He became increasingly unstable and threatened to have us arrested, only to change his tone. "I'm not going to arrest you," he shouted. "Otherwise you'll say I'm Idi Amin or another bad dictator like Colonel Gaddafi." Then he wrote this, in block capitals, in my notebook: "Europe still continues to underdevelop Africa. Africa's raw materials are Europe's tool to keep black Africa under so that western Europe continues to improve. Answer, 3,500 words." There was something of Lear in Strasser that evening, the broken king raging at the injustices of the world. I met him again several times after that and he was always sober and lucid. Yet that night I had seen a different Valentine Strasser and begun to understand something of the burdens he carried. As we drove back over the hills in the tropical dark, it was clear to me what a terrible misfortune it was for him to have been crowned by accident.
James Appleton contributed additional reporting from Warwick University

AT ROAD SIDE PALMWINE BAR



1 comment from readers

Kadija xxxxx 02 February 2012 at 22:53

In reference to your article "THE VAGOBOND KING" BY SIMON AKAM.. i am sorry to say that this man had an unfortunate encounter with his destiny... but i believe it is not the end of his life... it is an absolute shame that Sierra Leonean are ignoring someone who was once a Head of State.... no matter what happened the name Strasser will forever be in the history of Sierra Leone.. It does not matter how he was elected, it was destined by God.. If we read the story of Job we saw exactly what happen to him, and how God use satan to destroy him and later brought back total restoration with double portion of everything he lost... I believe this man need to be treated with dignity as how other country threats their ex president or head of state.... in the article it stated that he was not elected, that's is true but he was known world wide as the Head of State of Sierra Leone..that alone should make think that this man should be treated with compassion instead of letting him be a fool around town, rwith every one watching him destroy his life...journalist from outside interviewing him.... He was not the only culprit in his rigime,there were others also, who are very successful, something his wrong... where are they? why are they not helping? Why is the government not helping...the country that I was born and raised are full of loving, caring, compassionate, helpful and forgiving people.. we are open minded, like strangers.. why can't we stand and help this man...Our God is the only one that can judge, and he is the one that can render punishment... How long will you see your fellow brother suffer... Let us remember that God is able to turn things around for this man because he is our Yaweh( our God of deliverance and salvation... he lifted one and putteth another down... Go out the lord is before, help him and you will what the Lord will do for You.... This is written out of compassion.


Day of take over-

NOTE: All coloured photos added by me. Black & white photo in originnal article by Simon Akam . My thanks to Ade Daramy for bringing this article to my attention and Simon Akam for writing it

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UPDATE FROM

   THURSDAY 16/02/2012

THANKS TO  ALUSINE  A SESAY FACEBOOK POST ON  http://www.facebook.com/alusinesesay

SIERRA LEONE: Ex-Sierra Leone president stripped of all power trappings.
"According to Sierra Leone’s minister of Information Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, various regimes had failed to give him support.
Speaking to the Africa Review on phone from Freetown, Mr Kargbo said that the current government of President Ernest Bai Koroma was aware of Mr Strasser's situation and was working to assist him.
“President... Koroma asked me to contact Mr Strasser and after we got in touch with him, the President met him two weeks ago and they discussed modalities on how his situation can be addressed,” he said."

CLICK LINK-

http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/Former+president+thrown+to+wolves/-/979182/1328066/-/14efm49/-/




UPDATE FROM PATRIOTIC VANGUARD
Click here>>>>
http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?

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THE 1992 NPRC COUP - A Review 

Click Link:

https://youtu.be/FEqaY09ksLo?si=9_4pctHMalUHQZWSh

On April 29, 1992, Valentine Strasser, a 25 years old soldier, took the reins of Sierra Leone, a small diamond-rich country in West Africa, overseeing the lives of over 4 million people. His rise to power was a mix of fate, chance, and hopeful yet bizarre choices by both patriots and opportunists who felt he could easily be a vessel for their puppetic control. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse for Strasser, and a single poor decision continues to haunt him to this day.

He went from being the commander-in-chief and head of state of Sierra Leone, embodying power and affluence, to a deposed, destitute, wretched, and homeless individual, castigated and despised worldwide, except by his mother, who painstakingly cares for him whenever he returns from begging for dry gin in the neighborhood. The aftermath of his downfall was further complicated by the amputation of his leg in 2019. The question remains, how did he end up here? 

The events that unfolded after he seized power were more dramatic than strategic. But what went wrong? 

This is the story of Valentine Esegragbo Melvin Strasser, the youngest African head of state ever, who plummeted from power to become a destitute beggar.

His ascension to power inspired the youth and the young at heart, who believed that a youth had finally emerged to champion their cause. Before, the youth was the Cinderella in the political, economic, and social machinery of the government. However, Strasser was neither trained nor groomed to steer the complex machinery and routine of government. Numerous folk were left petrified, some gasping for breath or biting their nails. His youthfulness as naivety multiplied his woes as well as the hatred of his endless foes. Again Strasser was chosen not necesarily because of his leadership or military expertise, but simply because he was one of the few who had completed secondary school, and his English was good enough to read the junta's declaration on the radio. As captain, he held a higher rank than his co-conspirators, and some argued that Strasser was chosen because those around him felt he could be easily manipulated.

Once in power, he vigorously pursued the rebel war against rebel leader Foday Sankoh as one of his top priorities. But he was able to bag little success. He broke the deadlock by hiring the mercenary firm Executive Outcomes to supplement the army: since most of them had defected to beef up the Revolutionary United Forces, the rebel army. Strasser’s government was highly welcomed and popular, with people even snapping up calendars decorated with Strasser as their redeemer. In no time, the redeemer introduced reforms by endorsing a two-year transition to democracy. The soldiers launched a cleanup campaign to rid the streets of garbage, and the economy began to improve, with gas and electricity becoming available again. Ambulances, which had all but disappeared from Freetown, were imported and put back to use. Freetown was painted with inspirational slogans and images of national heroes. Street crime was reduced, and inflation was lowered from 115% annually to less than 15%. The perpetually adversed Sierra Leoneans were pregnant with hope, believing that Strasser was the expected Messiah, who would usher the chlorophyll of change and champion the redemption of the people of Sierra Leone. Down the road their dreams would be prematurely shattered.

Strasser seemed to be in control and proved his critics wrong who had judged him based on his age. However, after a brief period, the euphoria faded. Eight months into his presidency, Strasser made the worst blunder that would haunt him long after he left power. He executed 29 innocent civilians by firing squad on a beach outside Freetown for a foiled attempted coup in December 1992. Some of the men involved in the plotting were even in prison at the time. Realizing his mistake, Strasser apologized and declared a nationwide period of mourning. He also promoted himself and his colleagues in the army ranks, which sowed confusion and resentment within the military. This meant that junior officers were suddenly taking orders from those who had previously been their peers.

In a coup led by his deputy, Brigadier General Julius Maada Bio, along with Colonel Tom Nyuma and Captain Komba Mondeh, Stresser was kicked out. Bio quickly rose as the leader of the coup, with the support of Nyuma and Mondeh and took over as Head of State of Sierra Leone.

Although Bio was only 30 at the time and harbored ambitions of becoming president, he allowed the election campaign to proceed. In March 1996, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, a 64-year-old politician, was elected president.

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#ValentineStrasser #SierraLeone  #

EXECUTIVE OUTCOMES

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