When the now beleaguered Minister of Justice and Attorney-General attacked the credibility and integrity of the Liberian Judiciary and unjustifiably described the Liberian Judiciary as “being inherently compromised”, little did he know that he was threading an unchartered territory.
The Supreme Court of Liberia, which sits at the epic-enter of the Liberian Judiciary, has cited Frank Musa Dean to appear on June 6, 2023 to show cause and prove how the courts are “inherently compromised”.
The highest court is not taking Dean’s unprovoked attacks very lightly and is considering a number of actions to specifically review, first, his behavior towards the court as Dean of the Supreme Court Bar, and then his seeming flagrant disregard for the decision of the court which was publicized in the Liberian media.
Immediately following his attacks on the courts, other media practitioners, including his protégé Rodney Sieh of FrontPage Africa, took cue from his inflammatory comments and berated and denigrated the courts as being corrupt, with Sieh alleging on the BBC that US$500,000 was being dished to officials in the Liberian Judiciary to get an acquittal verdict in favor of the defendants in the US$100 million cocaine case.
“The attacks out of Dean’s playbook were launched to publicly mock and ridicule the courts and turn them into ‘scapegoats’ while the drug barons are [allegedly] perfectly shielded and protected by Frank Musa Dean,” observed a marketer at Waterside Market.
“How will the Justice Minister call George Abi Jaoudi and Bilal Abraham who imported the drugs?” she asked.
However, a Justice Ministry source told the Hot Pepper that the Minister of Justice has been very furious and brazenly disrespectful to the composition of the current bench because at the outset of the vacancy that was filled by Her Honor Sie-A-Neyene Yuoh he was seen and thought to be a frontrunner until the President had a change of mind due to the fact that most public officials see him as being allegedly inherently corrupt and incredibly inconsistent.
Sources at the Justice Ministry confided in this paper that because of the disrespect Minister Dean has demonstrated towards the highest court he has allegedly instructed the Ministry of Finance not to pay any money relevant to judgment rendered by the highest court until he can properly review and approve the payment.
Insiders say the Ministry of Finance is frustrated over this idea, and there are questions being asked as to whether the beleaguered Minister of Justice is higher than the Supreme Court of Liberia.
There are reports that the domestic debt section at the Ministry of Finance is swamped with money-judgments awaiting payments, but same cannot be done because the Minister of Justice has placed a stay on all payments growing out of a judicial decision.
The contempt hearing will bring the beleaguered Minister of Justice face to face for the first time not as “dean” of the Supreme Court Bar but “dean” of being a ‘common defendant’ who must prove what he means when he said the Judiciary—the courts are “inherently compromised”.
Sources told this paper that since Musa Dean was denied the opportunity of heading the Supreme Court he has been saying a lot of negative things about the court, both in public and at private gatherings.
The Hot Pepper’s investigation has discovered that his latest attack on the integrity of the Judiciary is a further testament of his dubious activities of secretly securing the call logs of judges and justices to see whether they are in contact with criminals or people perceived by the Dean as criminals.
This paper has gathered that the Justice Minister secretly secured the call logs of His Honor, Joe Barkon, Resident Circuit Judge of the Second Judicial Circuit, Grand Bassa County, at the time when Judge Barkon was pressing over a matter involving several timbers at the port of Buchanan that were allegedly harvested illegally.
Most lawyers interviewed prefer to speak on condition of anonymity. But they told this paper that the Justice Minister has an instinct of undermining people and pointed out that the recent allegations made by the US government that the Liberian Judiciary is corrupt seems to have caused these kinds of debasing comments made by Frank Musa Dean, and are therefore calling on the highest court for his immediate disbarment.
Meanwhile, information gathered revealed that some of the lawyers contacted by the Justice Minister to represent him are afraid to do so because they do not want to be seen as condoning what they termed as his infantile misdemeanor, which has brought complete embarrassment to the Liberian government.