Emanuel Shaw II is too sick to appear in court but well enough to attend meetings. Mungo Soggot reports from Monrovia
Emanuel Shaw II, the Liberian politician who insinuated himself into South Africa’s state oil industry, has tried to deceive the Johannesburg High Court by filing a fraudulent doctor’s note purportedly signed by Liberia’s minister of health.
Shaw sent his Johannesburg attorneys the note last week in a bid to postpone his R7-million libel lawsuit against the Mail & Guardian.
Shaw – who is economic and financial adviser to Liberian President Charles Taylor – is suing the M&G for a series of articles about how he pulled off an extraordinary R3-million job at the state oil company, the Central Energy Fund (CEF).
Shaw’s case suffered a body blow this week when his law firm, Beder Friedland, said it would no longer represent him. His attorneys gave no reasons, but have previously admitted to being unable to contact him for weeks in Liberia – until he informed them, on August 20, that he was ill.
Shaw, who has been referred to by the M&G as a “well-known crook about town”, is suing the M&G for suggesting that he had an improper relationship with the former chair of the CEF, Don Mkhwanazi, that he was not competent to hold the position as consultant to the fund, and that he was a known thief, having previously stolen money from the Liberian government. Shaw has not filed any signed papers in court. He has not even submitted a curriculum vitae or a character reference – elementary starting points for any libel suit.
On Tuesday September 1 the Johannesburg High Court ordered him to file papers in court by Friday September 4. If he fails to meet the ultimatum, his case – which was due to start on Monday September 7 – could be dismissed.
Shaw’s alleged sick note, dated August 25, is signed by Peter Coleman, identified on the letterhead as the chief medical officer at the John F Kennedy Medical Centre in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.
Coleman stepped down as the centre’s chief medical officer several months ago, after Taylor appointed him minister of health.
The Liberian president, whose election in 1997 ended the six-year civil war, fired the previous minister for trying to extort a bribe from a senior World Bank official. Taylor is said to be anxious to cleanse his government of rampant corruption as part of his drive to attract investment.
Shaw’s sick note reads: “He [Shaw] is now undergoing treatment and is presently admitted (may remain admitted for another week, up till September 1st) and this will be followed by a period of convalescence of two weeks. He may be FIT [sic] to resume normal activities (including travel by Sea, Land or Air) after September 20, 1998.” Unusually for a doctor’s note, the letter ends “we regret any inconvenience this may cause”.
On August 21, the M&G contacted several Monrovia clinics by telephone from Johannesburg to check whether Shaw had been admitted.
The sister on duty at JFK – Monrovia’s main public hospital – said nobody by the name of Emanuel Shaw II had been admitted there. She confirmed this in a second phone call after she offered to check the wards to ensure the records were correct. Other clinics – including two private ones – also drew a blank in their search for the elusive Shaw.
Coleman left for Zimbabwe on August 26 – around the time the letter was purportedly signed – and could not be reached for comment. He will remain in Southern African for two weeks. A source close to the government said it was highly unlikely that Coleman would have put his name to it and suggested that the letter had been fabricated by one of Monrovia’s notorious backstreet forgers.
The M&G could not find anyone in Monrovia to corroborate Shaw’s alleged stint in hospital – apart from the hospital’s deputy. It is understood from a number of sources that Shaw has been attending business meetings in the past week.
Exhausted from the civil war, Liberians appear accepting of their succession of politicians – such as Shaw – who have reduced their country to beggary.
Most people simply laughed when informed of Shaw’s progress in South Africa. One expressed amazement he had been given a top government post. Another businessman spoke admiringly of Shaw as “an intellectual”.
Taylor, meanwhile, appears to be pursuing a policy of reconciliation with those former enemies who survived the war.
Shaw served as finance minister and confidant to Taylor’s arch-enemy, Samuel Doe, the despot who was executed on camera in 1990. A decade earlier, Doe himself rounded up his predecessor’s Cabinet and had them killed on the beach in front of the international media.
As one senior official put it: “I sit around the table with people who literally tied to kill me. What can be worse than that?”
l Meanwhile, state lawyers representing Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna this week undertook to give the M&G full co- operation in the conduct of its defence.
This followed an attempt by Maduna’s department to use a section of the Constitution as an objection to our attempts to subpoena the minister and a number of his officials.
The M&G’s lawyers had to point out that the sections of the Constitution referred to by the department were intended to give citizens a right of access to information held by the state, not curtail it.