Revealed:CIA, Gaddafi,Diamonds and Weapons

Former CIA agent Roger d'Onofrio Ruggiero helped Liberia's Charles Taylor and Sierra Leone rebels smuggle diamond for weapons. Deals involved Libya and Bulgarian company, Kintex.

A retired Italian agent of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) joined then NPFL rebel leader Charles Taylor, and others, to organize an enterprise to smuggle weapons into the West African sub region. Roger D’ONOFRIO Ruggiero collaborated with Mr. Taylor, a representative of Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi, eastern European arms smugglers and RUF’s Ibrahim Bah to organize the International Business Consultant Ltd. (IBC) to serve as a support for large weapons deal.

According to the transcribed testimony of Mr. D’ONOFRIO Ruggiero in 1995 before an Italian prosecutor presented Thursday to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) by Mr. Immants Liepins, an investigative journalist of the Latvian Public Investigation Bureau, D’ONOFRIO, Taylor and others had shares in the company and the entity was also used to smuggle Liberian and Sierra Leonean diamonds in exchange for weapons.

The document revealed that the company entered into deals with a Bulgarian Company, Kintex, which supplied weapons and bullets to IBC and sold diamonds in return, camouflaged as oranges and olives with the aid of some Bulgarian companies in Zurich, Switzerland represented by a Swiss lawyer, Rudolf Meroni.

According to Mr. D’ONOFRIO’s transcript, in 1993 alone the company earned more the US$3 million dollars.“The company IBC is a Liberian Company de iure that was founded by me, Mr. Charles Taylor and Michele Papa, who was my representative in all deals with Libya, as he and Massimo PUGLIESE had trade relations with President Ghadafi,” the transcript said.

Mr. D’ONOFRIO told the prosecutor that he was introduced to Mr. Ibrahim John Bah, who posed as Liberia’s minister for mineral resources, saying, “these resources were diamonds, which Liberia sold widely and about which Libya has always shown a great interest.” More