By Patson Chilemba
Former first lady Esther Lungu’s lawyer, Makebi Zulu, says there should be no question about Esther or any other person keeping $400,000 in the house, “unless we are going to degenerate into the poverty mentality.”
And Zulu said the fact that police and Home Affairs minister Jack Mwiimbu gave different reasons for the investigations against Esther clearly shows that politicians were the ones pushing the whole scam.
Asked by Daily Revelation on why anybody would be keeping $400,000 in the house, Zulu described the same as a non-issue.
“The question is why shouldn’t anybody keep that kind of money? Is there a legal reason as to why we shouldn’t? Perhaps if you are able to answer why one shouldn’t then it may give you the answer why one should,” Zulu said. “There is nothing that stops me from keeping any amount of money that I desire to keep. And the very fact that I’m keeping such amount of money is no reason to suggest that it may have been ill-gotten, unless we are going to degenerate into poverty mentality … and we are not going anywhere with that.”
Asked how he reconciled his argument about former president Edgar Lungu’s immunity against a court issued warrant for which police have been accused of being incompetent that they failed to effect it, Zulu wondered if the police mentioned to the courts that the premises they intended to enforce the warrant on belonged to the former president, as if it were the courts would have considered the provisions of the law relating to that.
“If the warrant was in the name of the former president himself I don’t think any magistrate would have signed it. They would have recourse to the law,” he said.
He charged that there were two statements with police saying the investigations related to alleged motor vehicle theft and their minister Mwiimbu saying it related to abduction, wondering how the two government bodies in the same operations could have two different positions, arguing that this showed beyond reasonable doubt that it was being pushed by politicians.
Zulu said the police went to Lungu’s residence without hearing the side of Esther.
But asked if the statement Esther gave to police was in relation to the issues raised by Mwiimbu or those raised by police, Zulu said the questions related to the motor vehicles.
Asked what Esther’s response was in relation to how she came into possession of the same vehicles, Zulu said: “Well, you will soon get to know as to how exactly she came to have those.”
He argued that those in the UPND administration were trying to get to Lungu through Esther, and warning that President Hakainde Hichilema himself would one day be a former president and would not want to be treated the same.
Zulu said they could not say they were merely searching because prosecution involves investigation and the law was specific about lifting a former president’s immunity in that a sitting President will have to go to the National Assembly with specific allegations which would follow the lifting of the immunity and subsequent investigations on those very specific issues.
He said if police persisted in the manner they handled matters yesterday, even a garden boy could allege having something at the former president’s residence and they will carry on with further searches, adding that they could have simply called Esther to the police and she would have availed herself in the same manner she did at DEC.
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