By: G Bennie Bravo Johnson I
The attorney-client relationship is historically one of the most sacred and impenetrable privileges of complete confidentiality and one with explicit and implicit trust.
But, that is not in the case of Cllr George Kailondo, whose two of his many lawyers have chosen to withdraw themselves from his UD$7,000 tax clearance accusations levied against him by the lawyer of the Guarantee Trust Bank (GT-Bank) Jonathan T Massaquoi.
Cllr Massaquoi had initially filed over a US$1.2 million lawsuit on behalf of the bank against Cllr. Kailondo and his petroleum company the Kailondo Petroleum Company.
Moreover, Massaquoi requested the Debt Court to attach Kailondo’s properties by placing an attachment bond to the lawsuit, which compelled Kailondo to file a counter bond in the amount of a million dollars.
It is against the condition that Kailondo decided to give one of his many properties the multi-story apartment building which is valued at US$ 2.5 million that is situated on the oldest Congo adjacent to the Ministerial Complex.
According to Kailondo, he has paid US$7,000 as a tac on the property, with the Small Tax Division of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) that gave him the contested tax clearance.
The payment was supposed by two of Kailondo’s lawyers, Arthur Johnson and Swaliho Sesay, who placed their respective signatures on the document that was filed on May 29, 2023, as a surety bond to the lawsuit.
Later, Cllr Massaquoi noticed several irregularities in the tax clearance and wasted no time challenging it.
According to Massaquoi, the tax clearance is a subject for dismissal on grounds that it was fraudulently and criminally procured from the World Trade Center in Gurley Street in Monrovia.”
Massaquoi’s argument was based on the revenue law that places a tax on properties in the million dollars to the Medium or Large Tax Division, instead of the Small Tax Division as claimed by Cllrs. Johnson and Sesay.
Besides, Massaquoi argued that the US$7,000 reference by Cllrs. Johnson and Sesay were not found in the database of the Small Tax Division, which alleged payment is being investigated by the LRA
“If the US$7,000 was paid into government revenue, which is not the case, the issue of the tax clearance is practically impossible because the surety did not reference proof of a tax bill, nor did the surety clear out the balance tax amount of US$37,500 to warrant the issuance of the tax clearance.
“The surety has woefully failed to show any proof of an appraisal report by an architectural firm, in order to determine the value of the real property, nor did the surety provide a sufficient description of the real property as contained in the affidavit of surety, to make it an easy exercise to find the real property, “he noted.
However, based on Massaquoi’s argument on the falsification of the tax clearance, Kailondo, and his lawyers were compelled to withdraw that surety bond and subsequently filed an amended one on June 2, 2023.
Kailondo’s June 2 amended document carries the same information but with Cllrs Johnson and Sesay refusing to place their respective signatures to the new document.
Interestingly, the new document beat the signatures of George Kailondo and another lawyer from Kailondo’s law firm, Atty. Sylvester G. Lormie.
The question remains what prompted Cllrs Johnson and Sesay to withdraw their signatures to the surety bond when they have earlier assured Kailondo of their willingness to pursue the case to its conclusion?
Maybe the two lawyers could have smelled a sound of criminal violations in Kailondo’s securing of the tax clearance that is causing them to abandon Kailondo at this stage of the case.
It can be recalled that GT-Bank accused Kailondo of conniving with ACE Global, the storage company at the Freeport of Monrovia, to dupe the bank of US$791,458.21, in the sale of petroleum products that were under the custody of the GT-Bank, and the insurance company posted the US$1,231,521.01 on Kailondo’s properties.
According to the suit, Kailondo entered into a collateral management agreement with the bank on September 29, 2017, for a letter of credit to facilitate the shipping of his petroleum products to Sweden and also entered into an agreement with ACE Global to monitor the petroleum movement from storage to the market.
The suit claimed that ACE without the bank’s knowledge, conspired with Kailondo and secretly took away the petroleum products subject to the agreement without any payment.
“When the bank discovered ACE Global and Kailondo’s dubious acts, Kailondo offered to make the full payment of US$791,458.21,” the suit claimed. “Defendant Kailondo’s offer was accepted in the utmost good faith to pay the full amount of ACE Global’s financial obligation, that is, terms of payment were drawn out in the Novation Agreement payable in twenty-four (24) consecutive monthly installments of the amount of US$32,977.45 commencing from November 30, 2017, to October 30, 2019.”
