MONROVIA — Former Chief of Protocol Nora Finda Bundoo turned herself in for incarceration Tuesday, hours after Criminal Court 'C' Judge Ousman F. Feika set her bail at US$8 million, rejected both surety bonds filed on her behalf and ordered her immediate re-arrest in one of Liberia's largest money laundering prosecutions.
In a strongly worded ruling at the Temple of Justice, Judge Feika disqualified one of Bundoo's principal sureties, declared the other grossly inadequate, and directed the court's sheriff to detain her at the Monrovia Central Prison, commonly known as South Beach, unless a valid bond meeting the new US$8 million threshold is filed and approved. Rather than await execution of the writ, Bundoo surrendered to authorities.
Following the ruling in which the judge ordered her re-arrest, she drove to the Monrovia Central Prison where she turned herself over to authorities for incarceration.
The surrender is a dramatic turn in a case that has tested the government's asset recovery drive since a Montserrado County grand jury returned the indictment on Nov. 5, 2025. While arrest writs were served on her co-defendants shortly after the indictment was returned, Bundoo was not served until June 9, 2026, because she was outside Liberia when the indictment was unsealed.
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Bundoo, who served as Chief of Protocol at the Executive Mansion under former President George Weah from 2018 to 2023, faces six charges, including money laundering, theft of property, misuse of public money, property and records, and criminal conspiracy, in an indictment brought by the Assets Recovery and Property Retrieval Task Force alongside the Ministry of Justice. Prosecutors allege that millions of dollars in public funds were laundered through companies linked to her family. She has denied wrongdoing.
Her return to the country in early June sparked the first controversy in the case when she arrived aboard an Air Peace flight and cleared immigration at Roberts International Airport without being arrested, despite an active warrant for her detention. The uncontested entry raised sharp public questions about the government's ability to enforce its own court orders and screen wanted defendants at the border.
Bundoo subsequently secured a property valuation bond of US$435,560, backed by sureties who pledged real estate in and around Monrovia, to guarantee her appearance before Criminal Court 'C'. Under its terms, she was required to appear whenever summoned, submit fully to the court's jurisdiction, remain in Liberia absent court permission to travel, and surrender to custody if convicted. It was that bond, along with a second filed on her behalf, that Judge Feika swept aside Tuesday.
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She made her first appearance before the court on June 23, arriving at the Temple of Justice flanked by supporters and prayer warriors dressed in white.
Tuesday's surrender also lands just three days after Bundoo turned her father's funeral into a charged political moment. Delivering a tribute Saturday, she thanked President Joseph Nyuma Boakai's government for allowing her to bury her father and accused members of her own political family of wanting her behind bars at South Beach, telling mourners, "I have learned my lesson." The remarks set off a firestorm within the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change, with critics reading her omission of former President Weah as a political signal and her daughter publicly defending her loyalty to the party.
Her incarceration would make her one of the most senior Weah-era officials to be jailed under the Boakai administration's asset recovery campaign, and it comes as the government faces mounting pressure to show results in high-profile prosecutions.
