MONROVIA -- The jury acquitted former Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah Jr. But former communications director of the Temple of Justice says the $6.2 million theft case is far from over, and the Supreme Court may be asked to do something it has never done before.
Darryl Ambrose Nmah, a lawyer, says Liberia's highest court could be forced to confront an unprecedented question when the three convicted co-defendants file their anticipated appeal. He said the Court would face the question of whether it could convict a man the jury cleared when all five defendants were tried and prosecuted together as one? Nmah says the answer, based on the trial record and Tweah's own testimony from the stand, may not be as settled as the verdict suggests.
When the jury at Criminal Court 'C' delivered its verdicts on May 8, Tweah, whom prosecutors had spent months portraying as the main architect of a scheme to embezzle more than L$1 billion and US$500,000 in government security funds, walked out of the Temple of Justice a free man. G. Moses P. Cooper, former comptroller of the Financial Intelligence Agency, was also discharged by Judge Ousman Feika without any conditions. The acquittals were complete: economic sabotage, theft of property, money laundering, criminal facilitation, criminal conspiracy, not guilty on every count for both men.
Nmah made his argument on the talk show "Class Reloaded," warning that the case is far from over and that Tweah's acquittal may not survive Supreme Court scrutiny once the three convicted defendants file their anticipated appeal.
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"I do not think it's over yet," Nmah said. "And I must be very clear, I am not saying that is what the Court is going to do. But as lawyers, you look at the predictability, and this has never happened in our system before."
Prosecutors charged that Tweah, in his capacity as finance minister and member of the National Security Council under former President George Weah, orchestrated the unlawful diversion of protected security funds into Financial Intelligence Agency operational accounts, effectively running a secret slush fund under the cover of national security classification. The charges included economic sabotage, theft of property, money laundering, criminal conspiracy, criminal facilitation, and misuse of public funds. The $6.2 million figure attached to the alleged scheme was large enough to command public attention and frame the case as a defining test of the Boakai administration's pledge to hold the Weah government accountable.
In the courtroom, that narrative did not hold. The defense argued consistently that the funds were legitimately allocated to election-related security operations under the National Security Act's confidential funding provisions and that neither Tweah nor Cooper personally benefited by a single dollar. That argument found traction in unexpected places: Karmoh, testifying as a witness, undercut the prosecution's premise by clarifying that the security spending had received approval from the National Security Council. Defense witnesses also pointed to the absence of any forensic audit directly linking the disbursed funds to personal enrichment.
Former National Security Adviser Jefferson Karmoh was convicted of criminal facilitation and conspiracy, though jurors deadlocked on the theft of property charge, leading to a court-ordered retrial. Former Solicitor General Nyanti Tuan was convicted of theft of property, facilitation, and conspiracy, with hung verdicts on economic sabotage and money laundering, sending those counts back for retrial. Stanley S. Ford, former head of the FIA, was convicted of facilitation and conspiracy, with hung juries on theft of property and money laundering, leading to retrials.
It is precisely those partial convictions that produce the legal contradiction at the center of Nmah's argument. If the jury found that a criminal conspiracy existed and convicted three participants, it simultaneously found that the man prosecutors identified as the conspiracy's principal architect had no part in it. That verdict, Nmah says, is one the Supreme Court cannot rationally leave intact.
"Normally, it's either everybody will be guilty, everybody take a pew, and the Supreme Court confirms it, or you plug some people out," he said. "But they will not try separately. They'll be tried as one."
Nmah, in his assessment of the prosecution's performance, called it the strongest the country has seen in a case of this nature. The government, he said, proved that $6.2 million was withdrawn from the Central Bank of Liberia without authority, that no legitimate national security purpose existed for the withdrawal, and that the money was never accounted for.
"The prosecution for the first time in this country has shown that they were up for the game," he said. "The government proved that the money was taken from the central bank without authority. The government proved that there was no national security issue for which they used the money. And the money disappeared, and that was theft."
The jury, Nmah noted, agreed with the prosecution on all of that, and still acquitted Tweah.
"The jury agreed with the government that people stole the Liberian people's money," he said. "They just say yes, they stole the money, but the other person in there?"
What makes Tweah's acquittal particularly difficult to rationalize legally, Nmah argued, is what the former finance minister said on the stand. Rather than distancing himself from the transaction, Tweah acknowledged authorizing it and defended his actions as within his authority as finance minister, citing national security justification, the same justification the jury rejected as a defense for the three it convicted.
The former finance minister took the stand and admitted and justified taking the money," Nmah said. "He did not say, 'I only gave it to them and I don't know about it.' He justified it, and he even said he used it for national security purposes, so he put himself in there, and it's in the record.
That testimony, Nmah said, now sits permanently in the trial record and will be directly before the Supreme Court when the appeal is filed. He said the high court will be compelled to ask how the jury weighed it, or whether it weighed it at all.
"The Supreme Court has the power to look at it. How did the jury not see this particular testimony, or how did they overlook it, or does it not have any bearing on the case?" he said.
Under Liberian law, the government cannot appeal an acquittal. Double jeopardy protections mean the state cannot retry Tweah or Cooper on the charges on which they were cleared, whatever evidence the prosecution believed it had is now exhausted on those counts. But because all five defendants were tried together, the government will have standing to argue before the Supreme Court when the convicted defendants bring their appeal, and Nmah said the government should use that opportunity to directly challenge the coherence of the split verdict.
"The government has an opportunity to make that case before the court," he said. "Because other than that, the government will never have that opportunity."
Nmah outlined three paths the Supreme Court could take. It could affirm the jury's verdict in full, leaving the three convictions and two acquittals intact. It could overturn the convictions entirely, finding the evidence insufficient. Or it could modify the verdict, the most consequential and most legally novel outcome, extending criminal liability to defendants the jury acquitted, including Tweah.
"The Supreme Court can modify the verdict," he said. "I believe so, because they were all tried as one."
He grounded that possibility in two precedents. In the Brownie Samukai case, the Supreme Court ruled that co-defendants who acted together could not satisfy a joint restitution order individually. When Samukai sought to pay his personal share and be discharged, the court rejected the argument, ruling that collective liability meant the full amount had to be settled before any defendant could be released.
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"They acted together, so they all got to pay that money together," Nmah said. "Somebody can't pay home when you finish paying your own, no. You all will pay."
He cited the Girl Scout case as a second instance in which defendants tried as a unit were convicted collectively, reinforcing the principle that joint trials produce joint outcomes.
But Nmah acknowledged that neither precedent directly answers the question this case poses, whether the Supreme Court can extend a guilty verdict to a defendant the jury explicitly cleared. That, he said, is genuinely new ground.
"This has never happened in our system before, where the court will have to review this particular kind of situation," he said. "It is an interesting case."
Despite the uncertainty, Nmah said he does not expect the Supreme Court to disturb the three convictions. The government's evidentiary record, he argued, is too strong.
"The evidence that the government adduced in court is rock solid," he said. "I do not see how the Supreme Court will overturn the guilty verdict."
He also pushed back firmly against criticism directed at the prosecution, arguing that the lawyers who tried the case delivered exactly what was asked of them.
"The prosecution made a case. They got the conviction. The prosecutor won the case," he said. "But we start pointing at somebody particular, then people say, but at a particular person you are looking for, and not the case."
