 Who is Lake Conroe resident Roger Crooks? And why is he suing the government
of Sierra Leone?
Once linked to alleged arms smugglers, Crooks, 59, is a well-known
businessman in Sierra Leone who mined diamonds there and helped save people
fleeing the fighting during the country's bloody coup in 1997.
The lawsuit, filed in state district court in Houston, requests that the
government compensate him for renovations he made to a hotel he owned there
before and after the coup. He said the government had agreed to reimburse him
for his losses, but later defaulted on the agreement.
Yet, he said he still loves the country where he has had connections for more
than three decades of his life and that he once described in the Times of London
as a "great casino."
"To win big," he said in the news article published in 1998, "you've gotta
bet big."
Crooks, who is at his 4,000-square-foot Lake Conroe home recovering from
gallbladder surgery, said he has tried to improve the lives of the Sierra Leone
people. He said he has financed and built schools, clinics and roads in an
impoverished nation that has struggled for political and economic stability
since it gained independence from England in 1961.
Born in 1948 in Jonesville, La., Crooks came to Houston for a job in the oil
industry and soon after that arrived in West Africa in 1969, eager for adventure
and fortune. He was working for a company hired to snuff out oil-well fires in
Nigeria.
He soon opened his own oil-service engineering company, which he later sold.
In little more than a few decades he had made millions in oil, diamond mining,
exports and imports, timber and a luxury hotel — the Hotel Mammy Yoko, a
prestigious inn in Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital.
The hotel, named for a popular female tribal leader, is at the heart of his
lawsuit against Sierra Leone.
What the suit claims
The suit states that he leased the 212-room hotel
from the government in 1995 for $190,000 a year for 15 years with a 15-year
renewal option. He said he spent $3.2 million refurbishing the six-story inn,
which boasts lush tree-shaded grounds, Internet service, a swimming pool, three
elegant restaurants, three bars and a casino.
He said he paid another $2.3 million for renovations after fighters ransacked
it during and after the 1997 coup. Further, the suit states that the government
seized the hotel in 1998 and deported Crooks. His deportation was rescinded and
he regained control of the hotel in February 2000.
The suit also asked the government to pay Crooks for his helicopter,
hovercraft and airplane that troops destroyed and that are valued at a total of
about $1.7 million. It also asks that he be compensated for housing the United
Nations members at the hotel since 2002 at a rate of about $40,000 a month
He said he filed the lawsuit in Harris County because his firm that oversees
his businesses, West Africa Holdings Inc., is based in Houston. Also, he said
he's uncertain if the Sierra Leone judicial system is corrupt.
Officials at the Sierra Leone Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return
calls seeking comment.
The hotel is only part of Crooks' story.
A report on the Sierra Leone diamond trade published in 2000 characterizes
Crooks as a one-time kingmaker, a millionaire with enormous economic and
political influence in the country. News accounts portray him as a central
figure in the country's 1997 uprising. He reportedly helped save about 800
people during the bloody fighting and also helped reinstall the ousted
government.
As the capital spiraled into chaos, armed gangs killed, raped and looted
throughout the city, and fighters bombarded the town.
News reports describe Crooks personally saving a 4-year-old British girl he
found wandering alone amid the turmoil. He gave her to his then-girlfriend, who
helped escort her to England, where the child was reunited with her family.
Crooks said Nigerians who had been training the Sierra Leone army stayed in
the hotel. Crooks, news reports state, told people who couldn't flee the country
to come into the hotel compound for safety.
He also was said to have hidden the country's defense minister there,
according to an article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2000.
Rebels attacked the hotel on June 2, 1997, firing rocket-propelled grenades,
Crooks said. He said he and a handful of fighters took cover on the hotel roof
and fired back. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded a few feet from him, leaving
him deaf in his left ear.
Later, U.S. Marine helicopters rescued Crooks and the other civilians.
"I'd been through seven coups in West Africa," Crooks told the Chronicle,
"but I didn't think I'd get out of this one."
After the government regained control, Crooks returned to Sierra Leone, but
was deported because he was suspected of supplying guns to the rebels. He denied
it.
He lived in nearby Gambia for nearly a year before the government rescinded
his deportation, invited him back and apologized.
Crooks had long been known to the British for his interests in Sierra Leone
and was identified as a possible arms dealer in a transcript of debates in the
British House of Commons in 2000.
Scheme alleged
In House of Commons documents available on the Internet,
Crooks is said to have been part of a scheme originated in Houston in the
mid-1990s by a "Texas gang" to ship rifles, rocket launchers, plastic
explosives, mines and other weapons from Sierra Leone to Northern Ireland.
The deal was uncovered by British and U.S law enforcement and reportedly
never took place. The documents said no arrests were made.
"It's all rubbish," Crooks said during the interview.
He said men "with Irish accents" approached him at his Houston office in
about 1993 and asked him to help them buy weapons in Sierra Leone. He alerted
U.S. and British authorities and they enlisted him as an informant.
The House of Commons documents say the scheme may have been created or
supported by British intelligence officials as a sting operation to entrap
suspected corrupt agents.
Crooks said he's looking forward to returning to Sierra Leone once he's fully
recovered from surgery, but he's also thinking about retiring.
"I'm slowing down," he said. "I'm trying to. But, you know, West Africa gets
in your blood."
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