Voice of Liberia Chief Executive Officer, Sekou Sheriff has alarmed threats on his life, by a Lebanese businessman residing in the country.
Sheriff during a press conference on Thursday disclosed that the Lebanese businessman only identified as Ali is the owner of the BMC Business Enterprise. According to him, Ali has made threats on his life simply for doing his work as a journalist, by investigating allegations against Detratar Babandi, another Lebanese and owner of Hardware Center, for his alleged involvement in under-declaring the value of goods he imports into the country, through the Freeport of Monrovia, thus robbing the government of lawful revenues.
“We called you people here today for the world to know about threats against us by a foreign national by the name of Ali. He claims to be the owner of BMC right on Capital Bye Pass. We have the threats through audio in our possession, where he directly called and threatened my life,” Sheriff told journalists at the press conference.
The journalist said while the investigation was ongoing, he contacted Banbandi to get his said of the information gathered. However, Banbandi requested for a meeting between his lawyer and the journalist, he said he didn’t want the information of the allegation get in the public.
Sheriff said he turndown the invitation extended him for a meeting, for fear of being compromised, and insisted on getting the response of the businessman, to the allegation of under declaration of imported goods.
According to him, at this point the businessman and his lawyer decided to approach the police to issue threats. After several attempts to get him abandon the investigation failed, the businessman sent two persons to negotiate for them to drop the investigation in the name of friendship, an overture which was again rejected.
However, the businessman out of desperation to prevent the information from getting to the public, involved his friend Ali, to intervene. Ali then on his intervention mission threatened to ‘deal’ with Sheriff, adding that “the case will not go anywhere”, which means that nothing will come out of the investigation.
Alarmingly, Sheriff he is afraid that Ali is the only Lebanese in Liberia with a gun and moves around with a siren and boasts of doing anything without repercussions.
He said he has formally written the Inspector General of Police, the Press Union of Liberia, some civil society organizations as well as foreign missions, including the United States Embassy, the European Union, Embassies of Lebanon, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, to alert them of the danger he has been subjected to.
Despite the treats, he said he is not deterred and will continue with his investigation by seeking audience with the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) to display evidence to back his allegation of the businessman’s tax fraud, against the government.
Both Banbandi and Ali are yet to respond to the allegations of threat, despite several efforts.