Corruption Entangles OLM, as Board Chairman Tarley Seeks Reinstatement

Editorial Commentary

Is it OLM again?  A Liberian would ask after witnessing repeated patterns of a problem child.  Yes indeed, it is OLM passing through the time with another more crisis, bordering on financial corruption and attempted impeachment.  This is nothing new to OLM.  Attempts were made to once impeach a president.  While such process usually lead to another division, some attribute theses scenarios to transformation.  For many Liberians involved in the social development of OLM, a fall out was imminent, given the confrontational leadership style of Dwanyen and his team, and how the election was tailored to have his cronies elected to the board.

It all began with a very good intention to depoliticize the OLM and make the entity more productive (service oriented).  Many suggestions, opinions and ideas were thrown out.  Surprisingly however to many who thought a dawn of a day has come for some stimulating debate, the Dwanyen Administration already had an agenda.  A constitution was already on hand with no room for discussion and suggestion. 
The reform process became even more frustrating when it became obvious that money was coming into OLM through the partnership efforts of Mr. John Tarley and some well meaning Liberians of the George-Walker team.  With news of a $75,000 grant and the $248,000 federal grant for an OLM community center, the Dwanyen administration had no time for broader participation in the transition.  In no time a new constitution was adopted and approved by only 76 members OLM of over 25,000 Liberians resident in Minnesota.  What a paradox?

Then the focus was now on the fruit of the transition: the money.  Although Kerper and many of his officers had out rightly said they had no interest to succeed themselves, their never-ending desire to hand pick successors raised eyebrows.  Overnight, OLM witnessed the least publicized election in history that brought in new board of directors. This effectively replaced the old system of electing president to head the executive committee.
 
The next was the surprise election of Mr. John Tarley as Chairman of the Board.  Then the incompetent mastermind of the forger of the OLM constitution was made Executive Director, why the publisher of the Dwanyen administration’s window dressed financial reports, was named Business Manager.  This arrangement caught many attention, as odd, and wonder as to why would someone, not at all, interested in succeeding himself, be so zealous about who comes after him.  That answer was soon to come when just after less than a month of inauguration, the board sought to unceremoniously impeach the Board Chairman, Mr. John Tarley, the mastermind of the $75,000 grant, with absolutely no constitutional backing or any form of due process hearings. Why?

According to the OLM constitution, as written by the Dwanyen group, a Board member is entitled to hearing, warning and other administrative actions before any removal.  This was never done!  Instead, a meeting was called to discuss other community matters when, all of a sudden, it was an impeachment (coup d'état) of Board Chairman, John Tarley.  As if that transgression was not enough, the Vice Chairman did not succeed Mr. Tarley as required by the constitution; rather, an election was held for a new board chairman, who was in fact a board chairman hopeful. 

As news about the impeachment drama unfolded, stories began coming in that Mr. Tarley’s impeachment bid is due to his intention to audit the Kerper Dwanyen.  According to reports, Mr. Tarley had requested full investigation into why Mr. Dwanyen authorized to issue a check of $15,000 to Mr. Stanford Peabody, a community yellow journalist, from the federally regulated community grant.  He also was attempting to set up an audit of the purchase of the community center for $205,000 and the report of 2008 and 2009 covering the Dwanyen administration. The question is why authorize payment to a media organization to purchase office furnuture without proforma invoice? Is the media organization a furniture store? Or was it a why to pay him for misleading public relations he rendered for the Kerper Administration? What is the deal here?

Here is the man who sued the former OLM election chairman for what he calls financial accountability, but he was bitterly opposed to check and balance in the OLM. As such, he maliciously refers to the constitutionally mandated Board of Directors as “Advisory Board.” The (1989) OLM constitution  called for the Chairman of the Board to be a signatory to the Organization’s account, but he acrimoniously refused for that to happen. At the same time, he’s offensively paid himself $1000.00 of the organization’s funds for non-contractual rent without the approval of the board; He has viciously misappropriated funds raise by various churches in community solely for the DED or immigration and is yet to account for over $12,000  raised solely for DED; at the same time funds were being disbursed and used without any budgetary approval, just to list a few.

The suspicion surrounding the purchase of the $205,000 community center is based on the fact that cash is paid for the suite.  This effectively takes out all mortgage interest that would make the cost of a building higher.  The irony of the OLM community center purchase is the cash payment did not lead to any reduction in the price of the suite.  This situation, according to source, raised concern for Mr. Tarley. 

As it now stands, the board remains adamant that Mr. Tarley is impeached.  Others believe that Mr. Tarley is still Board Chairman.  In fact, some are calling on him to continue his normal duty, and have called on him to call a board meeting.  As the cracks continues to widen, with all of this entangling corruption news, only time will tell as to how will the OLM recover, from yet another conflict.