Liberia charges five after cocaine seizure at Monrovia airport

More than 200kg of cocaine, falsely declared as Maggi seasoning cubes, was seized at Monrovia’s international airport on 8 June, according to The Guardian. Liberian authorities have now charged five suspects, after a delay in naming them triggered controversy in parliament and a special senate hearing for the police inspector general. The drugs were valued at about $19m, and investigators say evidence links the June shipment to a similar consignment processed in May.

The case is a reminder of how quickly West Africa’s aviation and logistics systems can be repurposed into a supply chain for foreign cartels. Liberia’s police inspector general, Gregory Coleman, described the operation as a transnational trafficking scheme using the country’s logistics infrastructure, and investigators say they have indications of complicity by the company that handled the shipment. One key suspect is described as the operations manager of that logistics firm and is in custody in Monrovia, while other suspects remain at large and are expected to face arrest warrants issued with Interpol support.

The political argument inside Liberia has focused less on the drugs than on the time it took to publish names. The Guardian reports that the suspects were not identified until a weekend press briefing, after lawmakers questioned whether evidence had been tampered with to protect well-connected citizens. President Joseph Boakai responded by ordering a combined investigation by the police and the national anti-drug agency, and publicly promised that Liberia would not be used as a “safe haven, transit point, warehouse, financial centre, or operational base” for narcotics networks.

That language is familiar across the region, where seizures tend to arrive as punctuated bursts of enforcement rather than as sustained control of ports, air cargo, and customs brokerage. The Guardian notes that West Africa has become a major staging post for shipments moving between South America and Europe, with traffickers exploiting weak screening, political protection, and the ability to hide high-value cargo inside routine trade. Liberia itself intercepted a much larger cocaine shipment at Monrovia’s seaport in 2022, and the paper points to other regional cases, including major seizures linked to routes out of Sierra Leone.

In this investigation, prosecutors went further than many public briefings by releasing identifying details for a UK-based suspect, including a Dutch phone number and a Birmingham address, according to The Guardian. One suspect is believed to have been in China at the time of the bust and has not returned to Liberia.

The cocaine was found at the airport, but the political damage is accumulating in the legislature, where officials are now asking who had time to intervene between the seizure and the press conference.