LUNGU NOT VICTIMISED – ACC

By Jessica Mwansa

ALLEGATIONS that we are involved in the victimisation of former President Edgar Lungu and the First Family are baseless, Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has charged. 

In an interview with The Scoop, ACC Head of Corporate Communications Timothy Moono said the Commission did not entertain any form of victimisation and that this was the reason the training their officers underwent upheld the rights of suspects.

“There has not been any victimisation with regards to the former First Family who stated that the Commission has been victimising them. I wish to state that most of the cases that relate to the former First Family are not handled by the Commission but probably by the Zambia police or the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) though as a Commission, any suspect or in investigation we conduct, we ensure that we follow the rules and procedures. You will not hear of an ACC officer assaulting a suspect. We do not do that so there is no victimisation whatsoever from our end.

“If we are going to call on a suspect because we want to interview them. We issue them with a call out and if the suspect decides to leak the call out to the media that is not our business. Ours is to ensure that our first contact is the suspect. If the suspect is represented, we issue the call out to the law firm, so what happens at the law firm or with the suspect and how the call outs are dealt with, is not our business,” Mr. Moono has said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moono has observed that with the increased amount allocated to the Community Development Fund (CDF), there has been more opportunities for some people to engage in corruption activities.

“The CDF amount has increased thereby creating more opportunities for corruption to happen and the Commission has taken a lot of interest in that area because we want to safeguard public resources and ensure that resources are used for the intended purposes. As per our mandate, we go and sit on selected committees for works and services to ensure that procedures are followed and to ensure that those awarded are the right people.

“The Auditor has been bringing out challenges of undelivered equipment over and over, unsupplied services, incomplete projects yet money has been paid but the contractors are either not on site or they have just disappeared and so we have followed up on a number of cases that relate to our mandate in that respect,” he said.