News Story

FREETOWN: MAADA GBESSAY KAI: President Ernest Bai Koroma's promises to the nation and the international community about corruption have been ringing hollow after 11 months of vacillation on whether to declare his assets, put strong preventive mechanisms in place, and monitor the ethical commitment of his ministers and top officials to his pronounced fight against corruption. But evidently, it is all talk and more of the same. Our New People investigative team can now reliably inform the public that a deposit of GBP 21, 000 (twenty one thousand pounds) has been lodged into the London account of Kemoh Sesay, the Transport and Aviation Minister in Sierra Leone. Our documents and paper trail can be posted on this news web site (like all the others we have posted before) if the minister wishes to deny or challenge this firm assertion. The document in the possession of The New People has a number of other confidential transactions which we think we need to protect in line with our commitment to protecting Mr. Kemoh Sesay's personal life. What is evident is that the massive 21,000 British Pounds Sterling deposit is not his salary and it is not per diem.

The New People team tracking the money has tracked the amount back to the Serra Leone Ports Authority. The money is believed to be charges from the country’s freight levies. These freight levies are expected to be posted directly into the government's revenue system. With the president recently announcing to the nation that the country must expand its revenue base, it is tehrefore of especial concern that money that is supposed to go into Sierra Leone's coffers is finding its way into a foreign bank account amidst the trenchant, yet empty calls by the president for zero tolerance to corruption.

Proceeds from freight levies are controlled by the Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Maritime Administration (SLMA), Mr. Phillip Lukulay. Our sources indicate that when the Kemoh Sesay took over as Minister of Transport and Aviation, he had planned to remove Mr. Lukulay from the position of Executive Director of the SLMA because of his alleged political sympathy for the former SLPP. As a way of maintaining his job, Mr. Lukulay was said to have told the Minister of money they can collectively make through freight levies and other means and that the minister could be assured of his complete confidentiality. This seemed to have appeased the minister who later relented on his threat of removing Lukulay from his position.

The mysterious GBP21, 000 (twenty one thousand pounds) in the account of Kemoh Sesay needs to be explained as The New People is unaware of any lottery winnings by the Minister of Transportation. If the anticorruption commission is the teeth to the president's anti-corruption crusade, then it is especially ineffective and dull as most of these major acts of blatant corruption seem to be eluding them.

Kemoh Sesay has jokingly said that in regard to the APC mantra about "zero tolerance," the president has the zero and they (the ministers) have the tolerance on corruption.

Mr. Kemoh Sesay was a business man before his appointment as government minister, but this latest deposit has nothing to do with his business activities.