five former FDA employees.

The five former FDA employees are charged with economic sabotage, criminal conspiracy, forgery and counterfeiting and robbing government of US$6 million.

The defendants are Moses Wogbeh, former FDA managing director; John Kantor, former FDA technical manager; Jangar Kamara, former FDA Manager for Commercial Forestry; David Blayee, former Surveyor for Grand Bassa County at the Lands, Mines and Energy Ministry and Maxwell Gwee, former Director of Cartography at the Lands, Mines and Energy Ministry.

They were indicted by the Grand Jury for knowingly conspiring to defraud the Government of Liberia of just revenue.

They are accused of facilitating the wrongful and illegal issuance of sixty-one Private Use Permits (PUPS) that authorized commercial logging operations on nearly 2.5 million hectares of land.

The indictment indicates that because of the defendants' blatant abuse of their offices and violation of several provisions of the National Forestry Reform Law (NFRL) 2006 and the Community Rights Law 2009, the government suffered a loss in revenue of over US$6 million.

Final arguments in the case were heard early last month by both prosecution lawyers and defense lawyers.
LINA/CMJ/TSS