VP Koung Denies Reports of Brussels Airport Search: "No Shoes, No Jacket Was Removed"

Vice President Jeremiah Kpan Koung has publicly disputed reports claiming he was stopped and searched while transiting through Brussels Airport, including allegations that his shoes and jacket were removed during screening. "No shoes, no jacket was removed," Koung said, describing the stopover as "uneventful" and insisting he passed through the same standard passenger route "the same one everyone uses."

According to Koung, he used the layover to visit the airport's Duty Free shops to buy items for his daughter, a detail he offered as evidence the trip through Brussels was entirely routine. The stopover occurred while he was traveling to Vienna, Austria, where he went on to address the IAEA's 70th General Conference and appeal for international support toward Liberia's planned cancer treatment center.

Koung framed the airport reports as part of a recurring pattern of scrutiny he says follows his travel regardless of the actual circumstances, drawing a comparison to a 2024 controversy over his use of a friend's private jet. He referred vaguely to "the effect of the package" without elaborating on what he meant, a comment that leaves the underlying grievance, whatever specifically prompted the reports, unresolved even as he denies their substance.

Whether the original reports were simply inaccurate or reflect a genuine secondary screening that Koung is downplaying is not independently verified here; what is clear is that the Vice President considered the story significant enough to respond to directly and at length rather than letting it pass. With his IAEA appeal for cancer-center funding still the more substantive news from the same trip, the airport dispute risks becoming a distracting sideshow to a foreign trip that otherwise advanced a genuine policy priority.