Monrovia — Speaking in an unusually soft tone with a fallen face, the suspended Minister of State, Nathaniel McGill, says the U.S. Treasury Department may have gathered information on the "wrong McGill."
The suspended Minister of State told an Al Jazera journalist over the weekend that there are many common people who impersonate using his name and picture to extort money from businesses and other officials of government.
He said he believes someone "gave the Americans the wrong information".
"I don't think the American people hate me; but I think somebody may have told them something when they were genuinely trying to find facts. Somebody may have told them the wrong information," he said.
He said the sanction has damaged his reputation. When asked what his reputation was, he said, "honest guy, love the people, I only did good".
He said, "The truth is there are people out there who are using my name; maybe it was the wrong McGill. Go on Facebook, they put there Nathaniel F. McGill, Minister of State, we've reported this to the police, the press has reported on this and people have been arrested. There are people out there doing these things and they think it's me."
McGill insisted he has never been involved with any form of corruption and therefore looks forward to the law taking its course in proving the allegation leveled against him.
He said he is willing to bear the full weight of the law if it is established that he was involved with corruption. He again called for an investigation into the allegations raised by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
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The U.S. Treasury Department alleged that Mr. McGill bribed business owners, received bribes from potential investors and accepted kickbacks for steering contracts to companies in which he has an interest. McGill allegedly manipulated public procurement processes in order to award multi-million dollar contracts to companies in which he has ownership, including by abusing emergency procurement processes to rig contract bids.
McGill is credibly accused of involvement in a wide range of other corrupt schemes including soliciting bribes from government office seekers and misappropriating government assets for his personal gain. He has used government funds allocated to other Liberian government institutions to run his own projects, made off-the-books payments in cash to senior government leaders, and organized warlords to threaten political rivals. McGill has received an unjustified stipend from various Liberian government institutions and used his position to prevent his misappropriation from being discovered. McGill regularly distributes thousands of dollars in undocumented cash to other government officials for government and non-government activities.
McGill has been designated for being a foreign person who is a current government official who is responsible for or complicit in, or who has directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery.
