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Liberia: Overview of corruption and anti-corruption

Despite high expectations placed on Liberia’s new president, his Excellency George Manneh Weah – who came to power through Liberia’s first democratic transition of power in more than 70 years – corruption continues to permeate Liberian politics and the public service. Allegations of patronage, nepotism and cronyism plague politics, petty corruption is rife, and judicial independence is weak. Moral and financial support to public integrity institutions is also limited, with the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC), Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and other public integrity institutions without fully constituted leaderships. While advances have been made in the extractive resources sector, with Liberia making “meaningful progress” to respect the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative standards, overall challenges remain significant.

6 September 2019
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Liberia: Overview of corruption and anti-corruption

Main points

  • Allegations of patronage, nepotism and cronyism have continued in Liberia, despite a change in government, which came with high expectations to fight corruption.
  • Low salaries are often cited as the reason for petty corruption in the country, especially across all levels of government.
  • Legislative framework has little influence on corrupt practices.
  • Transparency improvements are significant only in Liberia’s natural resources industry.

Cite this publication


Lee-Jones, K. (2019) Liberia: Overview of corruption and anti-corruption. Bergen: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Chr. Michelsen Institute (U4 Helpdesk Answer 2019:11)

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Krista Lee-Jones

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All views in this text are the author(s)’, and may differ from the U4 partner agencies’ policies.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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