Hakainde’s directive on FIC report

By Daily Revelation Editor 

President Hakainde Hichilema has urged law enforcement agencies to promptly investigate the suspicious transactions highlighted in the 9th Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Trends Report for 2023, released by the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).

The report catalogs various suspicious transactions, with the President indicating that he expects the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), and other relevant agencies to thoroughly investigate all issues raised in the report.

“Illicit transactions undermine a country’s development agenda,” President Hichilema said.

The message from Hakainde is highly welcome, especially that it is coming from the highest office of the land. We expect that the investigating wings will follow up on the guidance to rein in on the these suspicious transactions.

However, we are very skeptical that anything will come out from this. Usually, the FIC reports sole impact since they were established has been relegated to sudden emotional shocks, followed by a few commentaries here and there, before getting buried into the sunset a few days later, to wait for another report that will produce similar reactions.

Several reports are released in this country revealing illicit transactions, abuse of resources or even misapplications of public resources, but there are few to no examples one could point to in terms of the culprits being brought to book. We feel the same will be the exact outcome with this latest FIC report, if there will not be a thorough and wholehearted follow up from Hakainde on his pronouncements. This is because institutions in this country rarely expend their energies on such worthy ventures, except maybe flooding the court premises with police officers to stop those seeking to offer solidarity to someone they support, or arresting a few protesters airing their grievances at Zesco offices over the company’s failure to adhere to its own load shedding schedule.

In any case, it should not even take the whole lot of State House to direct state institutions to pursue what they were mandated to do. The purpose for setting up the ACC, DEC, Police and other relevant institutions was to ensure that they voluntarily follow through on criminality or any suspicion of it without anybody urging them to do so. 

But to ensure that these institutions live up to their mandate, their independence has to be addressed in the first place. What we have noticed is that Presidents, not just Hakainde, but almost all the presidents, have appointed known ruling party sympathisers, supporters or even cadres to head these institutions. The end result is that there has been a heavily biased inclination to go after the corruption of their political opponents they have deposed from power, rather than their own fellow party members. The only ones who can take up the challenge of going after their fellow party members are those whose moral compass is so high, almost angelic,  and they will do so knowing that every action they take against a serving government official is drawing them closer to their exit door.

As a country we need to relook into the operations of these state institutions to make them more effective, including addressing the platforms they operate on in terms of addressing the laws, appointments and tenures of office. These are some of the most important matters the President should consider if he has to effectualise his zero tolerance to corruption policy. And we have singled him out because it seems he’s the only one in the UPND administration who regularly mentions about anything to do with the fight against corruption.

In the meantime, we wait to see how the institutions he has directed to follow up on the illicit transactions will go about handling that directive, since it seems they have to wait to be directed over something they were mandated to do – so that for once Zambians can see tangible results from matters arising from the FIC reports, and closely associated with that, the Auditor General’s report.