Conte, a Guinea‑Bissau national and the defense’s first witness, testified that the government had inserted a photo of the container allegedly holding cocaine into his phone. He told the judge and jurors that the image—showing a container filled with fresh frozen pig feet—was added by officials after his arrest by the Liberia National Police and the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency in 2022. According to Conte, the original content on his phone was in Portuguese, but the authorities erased it, altered it to English, changed his password, and planted the photo to make it appear that he had placed the container there.
The photo now forms part of the prosecution’s documentary evidence, intended to persuade the grand jury to convict Conte and his co‑defendants in the US$100 million cocaine smuggling case. The defendants were indicted following a bust on 1 October 2022, when a Liberian national, Oliver Zayzay, was arrested after attempting to purchase what seemed to be a shipping container of frozen pig feet from a refrigerated storage facility in Monrovia.
Prosecution witness Samuel Nimely, the general manager of TRH—the consignee of the shipment—contradicted Conte’s claim. Nimely said Conte voluntarily showed the parking order for the pig‑feet container shipped from Brazil and identified the specific container among several others at his warehouse. He testified that Conte was prepared to pay US$200,000 for the container, which actually cost US$21,000. Conte denied ever offering US$200,000 to TRH Trading for the container containing cocaine, as Nimely asserted.
Conte also argued that the two statements he signed during police and drug‑agency interviews were drafted by the officers, not by him. He maintained that he could not understand English and was given a French interpreter, which he claimed he could not follow. Nevertheless, the officers wrote the statements, and he signed them, insisting they were not his own words.
The defendants face charges of money laundering, unlicensed possession and importation of controlled drugs, and criminal conspiracy. The case originated from the seizure of US$100 million worth of cocaine in 2022. Initially, the defendants offered US$200,000 to the container’s owners, AJA Group Holdings, for the entire shipment, which was valued at less than US$30,000. Within eight hours, they raised the offer to US$400,000 and eventually to US$1 million. AJA Group, suspecting narcotics trafficking, alerted the United States Ambassador, prompting American and Liberian anti‑narcotics agencies to intervene and apprehend the suspects. The bust is believed to be the largest arrest by street value ever recorded on the African continent.
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