Fri, 03 Feb 2017 12:26:21 +0000
SAVIOR Chishimba has declared that he will soon launch a vicious campaign against President Edgar Lungu and former president Rupiah Banda over what he termed grand corruption and that all the money and assets the two leaders have acquired will have to be returned to the Treasury.
And Dr Chishimba has said he is a clean politician who has never involved himself in corrupt activities such as syphoning money from the National Youth Development Council (NYDC) as alleged in the 2015 Auditor General’s report.
The AG report for 2015 said that over K153,000 was either fraudulently obtained by Dr Chishimba when he was chairman of the NYDC in 2014 or corruptly paid to the United Progressive Party (UPP) president.
Dr Chishimba claimed that the Maizegate scandal was not a hoax and that he had solid evidence that the rate at which the Malawian government purchased maize from the Zambia Cooperative Federation (ZCF) was highly inflated.
He said in an interview that his crusade was to make sure that Zambia was cleansed from corruption and that his target was those who were in the administration of second republican president Frederick Chiluba, former president Banda and President Lungu.
Dr Chishimba stated that no one should underrate his ability and capacity to fight the scourge of corruption in the Patriotic Front government and that anyone who would attempt to block his crusade would be run over.
“Let me tell you that my crusade is not a joke. I know the corruption that has been going on in this country but Zambia shall be cleansed from corruption. My crusade of ridding the country from corruption is starting from the Chiluba administration, the Rupiah Banda administration and the current Government under President Lungu.
‘‘The three will have to pay and the money will have to go back to Zambians. My grandmother Julia Chikamoneka could not have walked naked for nothing,” Dr Chishimba said.
The opposition leader claimed that he was corrupt-free and at no time during his time at NYDC did he ever dip his hands into the country’s purse for his personal benefits.
He said allegations that he was corrupt emerged only after he had busted the Zambia/Malawi Maizegate scandal which he said the Daily Nation had originally investigated professionally.
Dr Chishimba claimed that the Maizegate scandal was real and claimed that Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Margaret Mwanakatwe was fully aware of the deal and accused her of attempting to cover the paper trail.
“It is inexcusable for the Daily Nation to turn against me when the newspaper was the first to have professionally carried a story on the corruption at NYDC. I left the council after discovering that some senior Government official was a signatory to the NYDC account and the genesis of the story was well researched by the Daily Nation. President Lungu has a report about why I left and I have been innocent in all the accusations against me,” Dr Chishimba said.
