Maravi

Chiluba has destroyed many professional careers

Chiluba has destroyed many professional careers
By The Post
Sat 06 Nov. 2010, 03:59 CAT

Frederick Chiluba’s corruption has destroyed the professional careers of so many people at home and abroad. Since Chiluba’s highly questionable acquittal by magistrate Jones Chinyama on theft charges and the corrupt withdrawal of the appeal against his acquittal, he has been trying to posture that he is innocent of corruption and other abuses.

From what has happened to his solicitor in the United Kingdom, Bimal Bhupendra Thaker, it is clear that Chiluba and his tandem of thieves are guilty of more crimes than they were ever prosecuted for here. Anyway, this is why we called Chiluba a thief and continue to call him a thief. We paid a very high price for exposing Chiluba’s crimes. As president of the Republic, he unleashed the full might of the state machinery to crush us.

Instead of pursuing the thief, the police pursued us like we were common criminals. Workers at the residence of the editor of this newspaper were physically molested and live rounds of ammunition fired at the gate to gain entrance to his property.

This is how vicious Chiluba was when we revealed to the nation that the chap who was occupying the highest public office in our country was nothing but a common and shameless criminal. Chiluba had us prosecuted, alleging that we had criminally defamed him. To cut the long story short, we were vindicated when we managed to show that Chiluba, in fact, is a thief.

In the intervening years, Chiluba has used all sorts of political tricks to try and hoodwink our people into believing that his prosecution for corruption and other abuses of public office were nothing but political witch-hunt by his enemies, in this case, Levy Mwanawasa and ourselves, among others.

In Rupiah Banda, Chiluba has found a willing ally prepared to defend his crimes and to protect him from facing the temerity of his corrupt actions. It cannot be denied that Rupiah has gone out of his way to try and rehabilitate Chiluba’s tattered image in the hope that he will help him secure a second term of office. To Rupiah, Chiluba is a political engineer whose skills will help him to hold on to power. To Chiluba, Rupiah is a saviour who has to remain in power.

If Rupiah is not in power, Chiluba knows that he is finished. This is why Chiluba has continued to do everything that he can to demonstrate his usefulness to Rupiah. There is no doubt that Chiluba is doing everything he can to ensure that Rupiah returns as president after next year’s election. And Chiluba has been telling friends that he will not sit idle and watch his life being endangered by Rupiah’s electoral defeat; he will do everything possible to ensure that his saviour retains power next year and continues to save him.

The case of Chiluba’s lawyer in London is an important demonstration of the crimes that Chiluba and his league were involved in. One of the criminal actions that has caused Thaker to lose his licence is the activities that he engaged in in November 2001. On July 10, 2001 and November 6 the same year, US $199,995 and US$399, 995, respectively from the Zambia Intelligence Services were sent to Thaker’s law firm in London.

On November 7, 2001, Chiluba called Thaker to ask him if Faustin Kabwe had called him to instruct him to give him some money. Thaker confirmed with Kabwe and withdrew 30,000 British pounds cash, which he gave to Chiluba. The law society in England found this conduct to be “spectacularly stupid” and a breach of the money laundering regulations that govern lawyers in the UK.

Thaker was also found guilty of facilitating the criminal movement of funds amongst Chiluba’s league, including Access Financial Services Limited and its directors that Chiluba used to steal Zambian government funds. There can be no doubt once somebody reads the findings of the solicitor’s disciplinary tribunal that Chiluba, as far as they were concerned, was engaged in criminal activity that should not have been facilitated by a lawyer, a solicitor.

And because Thaker flouted his professional regulations in furtherance of Chiluba’s criminal schemes, today this poor chap is without a lawyer’s practicing licence, his professional career has come to an end – Chiluba’s corruption has ended it. Thaker joins the long list of casualties of Chiluba’s corrupt presidency.

There is a lesson for those that surround Chiluba. One of the reasons that Thaker has been so severely dealt with is because the tribunal of his peers found that his conduct was not innocent. He was dealing with Chiluba in highly suspicious transactions at a time when it had become known to the whole world that Chiluba was a thief or was at least linked to very serious allegations of theft. But Thaker chose to ignore all that and continued to pay for Chiluba's children’s cars, Xavier Chungu’s children’s school fees, Faustin’s private expenses.

He also did the same for Francis Kaunda. The tribunal did not look very kindly on Thaker. His pleas of innocence could not be believed by anyone. This is the lesson that those who today are trying to help Chiluba to keep the loot that he plundered from our people should learn. A man who thought he could hide behind just being a lawyer has found himself drawn in deeper than he could have wished for.

Today Thaker is being suffocated by the same blanket – the blanket of a solicitor – that he thought could cover him or shield him from accountability for his complicity in the thefts of Chiluba. The legal profession that he thought he could abuse to commit crimes has done him in to protect itself.

We have no doubt that Thaker is not the last victim of Chiluba’s corruption. There are many more to come. There are those who are still trying to launder Chiluba’s stolen assets because of the protection that Rupiah is giving him. They too will face a day of reckoning.

Chiluba did not steal from an individual; he stole from our people, the poorest of the poor. Justice may be long in coming but we have no doubt it will come. Chiluba may think he has gotten away because of his friendship with Rupiah, but let him think again. Tomorrow, Chiluba will wake up to find there is no Rupiah to run to because he is on the run also. The blanket that Chiluba is trying to use to shield himself from accountability will not always be there to cover him.

Even his protector Rupiah will one day not only be unable to protect Chiluba but also himself. And that day is near. This is why the only protection someone can have is always doing the right thing – whatever the consequences.

What has happened to Thaker should also serve as a warning to those who today surround Rupiah. The allure of power is such that those who possess it think that they will always have it. This causes people to fall into a pattern of carelessness and recklessness because they control the system, they make the rules and enforce them. We have seen this in the current debate that is going on regarding the Anti Corruption Commission Act.

Rupiah and his minions know that they are up to no good. They know that soon they will be in trouble for the wrong things they have been doing. Their hold on power is fooling them into believing that they can avoid accountability forever by simply removing some inconvenient law or other. We have no doubt that Rupiah has no shortage of legal and other advisors who are telling him that this is the best thing to do. And because of the problems that he has, he is prepared to believe them. But wrong things being what they are, Rupiah and his friends can run but they won’t be able to hide forever.

Those who work for Rupiah should learn from Thaker. He, like other hangers-on that surrounded Chiluba, thought that he could get away from responsibility for the crimes they were committing because he was working for a president, a very powerful man controlling everything and everyone. But where has that left him today? We have no doubt that Thaker made a lot of money through his dealings with Chiluba, Xavier, Faustin and other crooks of the Chiluba tandem. But where will that money take him?

Labels: BIMAL THAKER, FREDERICK CHILUBA

posted by MrK @ 1:19 AM