The new Liberian president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has sacked the entire staff of the country's finance ministry, as part of her anti-corruption drive.
The president, who promised at her inauguration to take on and fight corruption, said the ministry's corrupt practices had embarrassed Liberia in front of the international community.
Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf said she considered everyone in the ministry to be a political appointee.
Endemic corruption was a key cause of Liberia's civil war, which killed 250,000 people and devastated Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed American slaves in 1847.
