Published: August 13, 2026
MONROVIA – A Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency officer posted at Roberts International Airport is accused of taking US$5,000 to help swap out cocaine the state had already seized, an allegation that lifts the case against Moses Jallah from lesser offenses to trafficking itself.
Jallah now faces eight counts: criminal facilitation, criminal conspiracy, criminal solicitation, illicit drug trafficking, bribery, hindering law enforcement, obstruction of government functions and tampering with a criminal investigation. The charges are brought under Liberia’s Penal Law and the 2023 drug law, according to an amended charge sheet produced by an LDEA and Liberia National Police investigation. He was forwarded to the Monrovia City Court on Wednesday.
The money came from George Harris, the Private Bar owner also known as Leroy Harris, who told investigators he handed Jallah the cash inside his office on the night of June 7, hours after the seizure, to facilitate the exchange of the confiscated drugs, the charge sheet says. Investigators contend the payment was meant to substitute or return cocaine already in government custody, which is what separates the amended case from the earlier one. Harris has not been convicted of anything and is himself before the Monrovia City Court.
Jallah gives a different account of the same meeting. He told investigators he went to Private Bar to follow up on information Harris had given him, that Harris told him the drugs at the cargo facility were 20% of his share and that another man controlled the rest, and that he left and passed the information to his superior. He says he acted throughout on his commander’s instructions and reported what he was offered. He has denied wrongdoing and is presumed innocent unless a court finds otherwise.
Before that meeting, according to both the charge sheet and Jallah’s own statement, Harris called him by WhatsApp while he was at the airport and told him to stop the inspection, promising US$100,000 if the shipment was allowed to leave. Jallah says he immediately told his commander, Clarence Clarke, and that Clarke said Harris had made him the same offer. The charge sheet likewise records Harris contacting both men. The draft does not say whether Clarke has been charged, cleared or interviewed. That is the question a reader will ask first, and the story has to answer it.
The government’s case is that Jallah knew enough to act and did not. He had been told by Harris about an earlier consignment expected through the Freeport disguised as onions and candies, investigators say, and he associated Harris with a man identified as Michael Browne in a way that had already raised his suspicion. Knowing that, prosecutors allege, he met Harris rather than arrested him and did not immediately report the encounter.
The seizure itself was of 198 processed plates of suspected cocaine at the airport on June 7, valued by investigators at more than US$19 million. The consignment, six boxes booked to London on Brussels Airlines, was declared as lappas and Maggi cubes at about 200 kilograms. Handlers found the actual weight to be 237.6 kilograms, and screening turned up a white powder in one of the boxes.
Jallah was arrested on July 29. The charge sheet gives his age as 32 while listing his date of birth as Sept. 5, 1975, which would make him 50.
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