Liberia, July 22 -- Liberia is a small West African nation of roughly 5.4 million people that has spent the past decade courting international donors with promises of cleaner public finances. This month, the country's own Auditor General delivered a verdict that undercuts those promises at the root: the system meant to collect and safeguard government tax revenue did not work, for six and a half years, at almost every level.

The audit, reviewed in a July 11 executive summary by the Legislature's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), examined every dollar that should have moved from Liberian taxpayers into the national treasury between July 2018 and December 2024. Its conclusion, in auditing terms, is as bad as it gets: an Adverse Conclusion,...