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Policy analyst, James Musonda, has argued that the trend of accepting forfeited money by government from alleged criminals is ridiculous.
“This trend by the United Party for National Development of accepting forfeited money from criminals and to claim that this supports national development and fighting against corruption is ridiculous, very ridiculous,” Musonda said in an interview with Zambia Monitor on Thursday.
He claimed that supporting alleged criminality implicates “you as government officials and suggests that everybody serving in government are criminals.”
“For example how can you accept US$24 million without ascertaining how much in total these criminals stole, that this criminal took this amount of money, this criminal will have to go with a criminal record, this is encouraging criminality and corruption,” Musonda argued.
He noted that doing so would encourage people to steal bigger money and find the way out of court.
“This is embarrassing, really retrogressive for a government that claims to be above board, this is a government of a criminal syndicate that we have never seen in unprecedented proportions,” Musonda alleged.
“You are selling mines without parliament approving in a criminal manner, you allow criminals to regain their planes, all deals in the mining are shoddy, this is retrogressive, you allow…This is retrogressive, at least for a party that promised change,” Musonda said.
He argued that what the government needed to do was not allow forfeiture of properties adding that by implication UPND wanted the same treatment when they leave office.
Musonda was reacting to a story carried by Zambia Monitor that the National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) had announced that it recovered over US$30.9 million in forfeitures from multiple high profile cases in the last one month.
Among those involved in the said cases included former Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) provisional liquidator, Milingo Lungu, who reportedly forfeited US$24million.
The other cases included that of Adel Micheal Botros and other parties that were involved in the gold scam at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport among others.
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