{"id":39794,"date":"2012-05-02T00:37:32","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T00:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=39794"},"modified":"2012-05-02T00:37:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T00:37:32","slug":"timbergate-trial-commences-in-freetown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=39794","title":{"rendered":"Timbergate Trial commences in Freetown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The trial commenced in the High Court of Sierra Leone on Tuesday April 24 in the matter of alleged conspiracy to commit corruption, involving Momoh Kemoh Konte and Alex Mansaray, named in the Aljazeera documentary footage broadcast in its program Africa Investigates Corruption.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Momoh Kemoh Konte was arraigned before the trial Judge, Justice Cham on seven count charges ranging from conspiracy to committing corruption, soliciting and offering advantage, and peddling influence, in the absence of Alex Mansaray with who\u00a0was charged for the same offence. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The charges were prepared by the Anti Corruption Commissioner, Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara following\u00a0the timber documentary aired by Aljazeera TV network\u00a0 on 23 of November 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Justice Cham sat on the issue on Tuesday at 9:30 am.\u00a0 Before the trial\u00a0proceeded, he ordered for names of the defendants to be called upon to ascertain their presence three times, with Momoh Konte only in attendance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Lawyer Reginald S. Finn prosecuting the matter on behalf of the\u00a0ACC applied for the charges to be read in court for the first time for the panel\u2019s hearing, which was done. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Lead Defence Counsel, Ajibola Maley Spaine raised objection over the fact that count charges 4 &amp; 5 are charges levelled to Alex Mansaray and not his client, Momoh Konte.\u00a0 Counts 4 &amp; 5 establish the offence of soliciting an advantage contrary to Section 35 (1) of the Anti Corruption Act 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The defence team of Momoh Konte\u00a0comprising of Lawyer Sulaiman Kabba Koroma, Mohamed P. Fofanah, and Lansana Kotor Kamara, observed that Momoh Kemoh Konteh\u00a0was the only one present at the trial proceeding. On that basis they applied that the matter be adjourned to May 21<sup>st<\/sup>, 2012 to such a time when all the accused persons shall be made present. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Momoh Konte stood in his strict suit in a relaxed mood, confidently smiling in court as he attended to all primary inquiries directed to him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The presiding judge, Justice Charm granted him (Momoh Konte) bail at the sum of Leone 150 million.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The trial commenced in the High Court of Sierra Leone on Tuesday April 24 in the matter of alleged conspiracy to commit corruption, involving Momoh [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":39795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[673,1],"tags":[11913,11699],"class_list":["post-39794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-uncategorized","tag-momoh-konte","tag-timbergate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}