Liberia: Rural Women Wait as Corruption Case Over Money Meant for Them Stalls in Court

A rural woman trader serves a customer at Yarkpah’s Town market in River Cess County Summary Women in River Cess, who were some of the intended recipients of a 2023 US$1. 7 million fund that investigators say was stolen, have expressed anger at the theft of badly needed money by officials from the Weah administration. They have also faulted the government’s transparency saying they knew nothing about the fund before the arrests made news. Liberia’s Asset Recovery and Property Retrieval Task Force indicted seven people in April over the alleged diversion of money. There is no word on when the case will go to trial. By Joyclyn Wea and Nemenlah Cyrus Harmon with New Narratives TARKUN TOWN, River Cess County – Before daylight, MissionMai Sam heads for her coconut and palm farm.

The mother of eight and her husband who cuts palm for a living, have spent years growing and selling what she can, hoping to make the farm bigger and earn enough to keep all of their eight children in school. So, when Sam, 48, learned that a Weah government program had set aside money to help vulnerable rural women like her, and that it was stolen by government officials, she was angry. “They are wicked,” Sam says. “They send their children to big big school, then we here are suffering. ” In April, Liberia’s Asset Recovery and Property Retrieval Task Force, indicted seven people over the alleged diversion of money from the 2023 Vulnerable Small Business Support Program, which was meant in part to fund the Rural Women Empowerment Fund. Those charged include former Mawine G. Diggs, Weah government commerce minister and officials connected to the ministry, the National Rural Women Structure of Liberia and the Liberia Marketing Association. Court filings from June said US$493,000 and more than LRD 190…