,.;
32. Having established the basis upon which plaintiff's money
was withheld by
defendant, we will now turn our attention to the basis upon which the money
ought to be returned to plaintiff or retained by defendant. As earlier noted the
money was withheld
pending investigation into
money
laundering
charges
preferred against the plaintiff and therefore whether it has to be released to
plaintiff or not
depends
laundering charge.
on the outcome of investigations into
We will
consider
the
reports that
the
money
emanated from the
investigations conducted by the defendant's officials into the money laundering
charges preferred against the plaintiff.
33. First, the Status Report of the Liberian Police Force (Annexure 'D') addressed
to the Director of the Liberia National Police and dated 30th September 2006,
contains documents that
were submitted by the plaintiff to the investigation
team. Of particular relevance here is a document from Spring Bank, Nigeria.
Plaintiff stated that he withdrew the US$508,200.00 from the account of his
company, Captino
Global Limited
domiciled at the said bank. In making their
recommendations, the investigative team stated thus "Having gathered 4'-le above
stated
documents- indicating the source of the US$508,200.00 and other relevant
.................
documents which were critically scrutinized...". Defendant's officials conducting
the investigation into the charge of money laundering against the plaintiff at this
stage acknowledged that they had critically scrutinized the documents submitted
to them by the plaintiff which indicated among other things the source of his
funds. Plaintiff had indicated that the funds were sourced from his business
accounts domiciled at the Spring Bank, Nigeria . The investigations did not find this
to be false.
34. Next, Annexure 'C' of plaintiff's pleadings includes two documents which were
written by the defendant's National Police Force to the Deputy Inspector General .
of Police in charge of operations and the Inspector General of Police dated
December 24, 2008 and December 27, 2008 respectively. The relevant portions of
the letter to the Deputy Inspector General of Police stated that "Investigation into
the matter revealed that the subject had on his person said undeclared amount of
US currency as indicated in the foregoing, but there was no illicit drugs found. Our
investigation at the time was unable to associate the amount in question to either
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