MONROVIA – Liberia’s anti-corruption campaign under President Joseph Nyumah Boakai has generated some of the most aggressive prosecutorial activity the country has seen in years. Former Finance Minister Samuel Tweah and officials of the Weah administration have been hauled before the courts, publicly charged, and formally pursued by state institutions. Yet from New Castle, Delaware, a U.S.-based Liberian journalist and former President of the Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas, Mr. Moses D. Sandy is asking a question that is gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic: can a government that cannot honestly account for its own Foya presidential villa project — a 6.2-million-dollar construction commenced without legislative involvement — credibly lead a war on corruption? THE ANALYST reports.
The Boakai administration’s intensifying anti-corruption campaign, which has prosecuted former officials, summoned ex-ministers before investigative bodies, and pursued what it describes as the recovery of stolen public wealth, is facing a pointed credibility challenge from within the Liberian diaspora — one that invokes not the language of partisanship but the ancient legal principle of clean hands.
Moses D. Sandy, National President Emeritus of the Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas, has issued a formal press release arguing that President Joseph Nyumah Boakai’s government risks undermining the moral and institutional legitimacy of its anti-corruption drive through a combination of selective prosecution, internal tolerance of corrupt conduct, and troubling inconsistency in public statements regarding a major infrastructure project.
The legal maxim that Sandy invokes — ‘He who comes to equity must come with clean hands’ — is not merely rhetorical. It captures a principle recognized in governance and jurisprudence alike: that the authority to hold others accountable for misconduct is fatally compromised when the accusing institution is itself engaged in comparable conduct. The maxim does not require perfection. It requires proportionality, transparency, and the consistent application of standards that the institution publicly champions.
By Sandy’s assessment, the Boakai administration fails on multiple counts. The most dramatic illustration of this failure involves the government’s pursuit of former Finance and Development Planning Minister Samuel Tweah Jr., who was charged alongside former officials of the Weah government with economic sabotage, specifically for alleged failure to account for 6.2 million U.S. dollars in public funds. The prosecution was high-profile, publicly trumpeted, and ultimately unsuccessful. The government’s own prosecutors failed to substantiate the charges. Tweah was declared not guilty.
The acquittal, however, did not prompt reflection or institutional recalibration. Barely one week after the verdict, the Asset Recovery and Property Retrieval Taskforce of Liberia summoned the same former Finance Minister — and additional Weah-era officials — for further questioning, this time over their alleged involvement in a rice subsidy scheme valued at more than 20 million U.S. dollars. The speed of the follow-up summons, coming so close on the heels of a courtroom defeat, struck many observers as prosecutorial persistence of a kind that invites uncomfortable questions about whether justice or political pressure is the primary motivation.
Sandy is direct on this point: ‘When you cherry-pick, shield, or deliberately stall the prosecution of officials in your government accused of malfeasance, but your government is boldly going after perceived enemies accused of similar acts, it creates the appearance of double standards.’
The hypocrisy charge, as Sandy frames it, is not about whether former officials should be held accountable — Sandy explicitly endorses that principle — but about whether accountability is applied equitably, regardless of whose allies are implicated.
The Foya presidential villa project — alternatively described at various points as a presidential villa and as the Mano River Union Center for Regional Peace and Development — sits at the centre of this credibility crisis. The project’s details have been marked, since their public emergence, by contradiction, inconsistency, and a lack of the transparency that the Boakai administration publicly champions.
Construction on the project reportedly began in 2025 without public disclosure. No legislative authorization was sought or obtained. The nature of the project — its purpose, its legal structure, its cost, and its ownership — was not proactively communicated to the Liberian public. When media scrutiny forced the administration to address the matter, the explanations offered were contradictory in the most basic respects.
In December 2025, President Boakai characterized the center as jointly owned by member countries of the Mano River Union — Guinea, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Liberia — with funding and operational costs to be shared among them. This framing would have positioned the project as a multilateral initiative rather than a unilateral Liberian expenditure, potentially explaining the absence of domestic legislative involvement.
One month later, in his January 27, 2026, annual message to the 55th Legislature, the President contradicted that account entirely, stating that the center is owned solely by the Liberian government. The cost of the project is reported at approximately 6.2 million U.S. dollars — the same figure at the center of the prosecution of Samuel Tweah.
The irony of that numerical coincidence has not been lost on observers. The government that charged a former minister with failing to account for 6.2 million dollars in public funds is itself unable to provide a consistent explanation for a 6.2-million-dollar construction project commenced without legislative involvement and characterized, within the space of thirty days, as both a multinational initiative and a solely Liberian asset.
Sandy’s critique encompasses the broader definitional scope of corruption in public life. The definition, he argues, is not exhausted by the physical theft of money. It extends to deceit, misrepresentation of truth, nepotism, and non-adherence to the rule of law. By this fuller definition — which mirrors the standards of most governance frameworks and international anti-corruption conventions — the Boakai administration’s conduct on the Foya project, and on the pattern of dismissals and rule-of-law violations cited by Sandy, constitutes precisely the category of conduct it has vowed to eradicate.
The removal of former Speaker J. Fonati Koffa and the expulsion of Representative Yekeh Kolubah of Montserrado County’s District 10 are cited by Sandy as further examples of the administration’s willingness to bypass legal process when doing so serves political ends. Both actions, in his assessment, occurred with the support or acquiescence of President Boakai, and both drew criticism from legal scholars and governance advocates for their procedural irregularities.
ALJA, the organization whose presidency emeritus Sandy holds, was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1998 with a mandate that encompasses not only the advancement of press freedom but also advocacy for good governance and accountability in Liberia. In that capacity, Sandy’s intervention is not the private opinion of a diaspora commentator but a formal institutional position grounded in a long-standing commitment to the principles it critiques the government for abandoning.
Sandy is explicit that the intervention is not motivated by opposition to the anti-corruption effort itself. He welcomes and applauds the administration’s stated goal of recovering stolen wealth and ensuring accountability in the public sector. His challenge is to the consistency, the fairness, and the professional integrity with which that goal is pursued. ‘They must be fair, honest, and professional in how people are being accused and prosecuted,’ he urges.
The standard Sandy applies is not an impossible one. It is the same standard that the Boakai administration has publicly committed itself to. The question his press release poses — and that the Foya project, the Tweah prosecution, and the pattern of political dismissals collectively demand — is whether that commitment is genuine, or whether the anti-corruption campaign is a political instrument dressed in the language of accountability.
For Liberia’s credibility in attracting international investment, in engaging development partners, and in sustaining the internal legitimacy of its governance institutions, the answer to that question carries consequences that extend well beyond any single prosecution or any single presidential villa.