Over the past three years, United States authorities say, South American drug traffickers have worked to build a base in the West African nation of Liberia, where vast quantities of cocaine could be sent by boat or plane and then reshipped to markets in West Africa and Europe.
As part of the plan, the traffickers met with two senior Liberian officials, offering them millions of dollars in bribes to ensure safe passage for the shipments.
But what the traffickers did not realize was that both of the officials — one of whom is the son of the country’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — were secretly cooperating with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to help break the foothold of drug rings in the region, a federal prosecutor in New York said Tuesday.
