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Monrovia - It was no dummy drill for riot officers of the Police Support Unit of the Liberia National Police Monday - on how to control a rowdy crowd.Clad in full-riot gears to beef up a team of investigators from the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) and the Ministry of Justice, the Congo Town residence of Grand Cape County Senator, Cllr. Varney Sherman, was a scene of commotion as partisans of the Unity Party sought to prevent LACC investigators from implementing a reported search, seizure and arrest warrant for the corporate lawyer who is needed to be questioned by the Special Presidential Taskforce in the wake of the recent report of corruption by Global Witness. Cllr. Sherman is wanted by the Presidential Task Force to answer questions relating to the Global Witness report which alleges that more than US$950, 000 in bribes and other suspicious payments were made to top Liberian officials by the United Kingdom-based Sable Mining Company and its Liberian lawyer, Varney Sherman. According to the report entitled – The Deceivers – Sable wanted to get the concession rights to Liberia’s Wologizi iron ore. Sherman, who is also chairman of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s ruling Unity Party, allegedly told Sable Mining that in order to get the contract, the company must first offer bribes to senior officials to change Liberia’s concession laws. Sherman has said he will not submit to the Task Force probing the scandal, slamming the report as a “reckless disregard” for the truth. Sherman also said he and his law firm are prohibited by law and the Liberian constitution from divulging to anyone what they did for Sable Mining when they served as the company’s lawyers in Liberia in 2010. “Our code of professional ethics and the Liberian Constitution prohibits us from making any such disclosures and we will subscribe to those tenets even if we were to be taken to the gallows to be hanged,” Sherman said.
