By Watson Richards
MONROVIA — Defense and prosecution lawyers traded sharp arguments Friday as the high-profile US$6.2 million corruption trial moved closer to a jury verdict.
Defense lawyer Cllr. Arthur Johnson argued that former Finance Minister Samuel Tweah acted within the scope of the law and insisted prosecutors failed to prove that any of the accused personally benefited from the money.
Johnson told jurors that the state produced no evidence showing the defendants diverted funds into personal accounts or used the money to acquire properties. He also criticized investigators for failing to conduct an audit, calling the omission “a ground of doubt.”
“The issue before you is not a criminal matter,” Johnson argued. “It’s a disagreement of administrative procedures.”
But prosecution lawyer Cllr. Richard J. Scott, Jr. rejected the defense’s claims, accusing the defendants of abusing national security procedures to conceal the movement of public funds.
Scott argued that most of the defendants were not legally authorized to handle national security matters and accused them of laundering money through the Financial Intelligence Agency account.
“They took US$6.2 million while people are dying from curable diseases and children are sitting on bare floors in schools,” Scott told the court, urging jurors to return a guilty verdict.
The case now rests in the hands of the jury following the dramatic closing arguments from both sides.
