FIC Report Delay Sparks Anger, Speculation
The expected release of the 2019 Money Laundering Trends Report appears to have been delayed. As it stands the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) board has not given the go ahead for its dissemination to the public.
The development has angered some, with National Democratic Congress leader Chishimba Kambwili claiming that the report has not yet been released because government officials are trying to conceal their corrupt activities.
Alliance for Community Action Executive Director Laura Miti is among those calling for the report’s immediate release.
“Zambia's current economic disaster is the direct result of the mindless, reckless and arrogant debt contracted by the PF government. It is also because of the way that borrowed money was wasted and stolen - creating instant dollar millionaires in EL's Cabinet and among the PF connected,” Miti writes on social media.
“My guess is the reason the #FICReport is being held back is because EL does not want the annual ceremony of citizen rage at more billions lost,” she continues.
Miti suggests that President Lungu might as well release the report because in its absence speculation “will soon be at frenzy level.”
In a subsequent post Miti links the Government’s failure to release the report to the closure of Prime TV earlier this year.
“President Lungu's government closed Prime TV exactly for what they are doing now. Using ZNBC and more compliant stations to create and control the political narrative,” Miti writes.
“Right now, the government has held back the publication of the FIC report because the powerful cannot afford to have the country read again about how billions in dollars end up in their private pockets,” she continues.
“More billions in insulting bribes are being distributed to citizens. The source of that money in an economy in such stress needs explaining,” Miti argues.
“Individual Ministers arrogantly put on display stunning levels of inexplicable wealth. Other Ministers are arrested for corruption then cleaned up by strange judicial proceedings. All that happens without the platform for information and analysis that Prime TV offered. That's why they closed it.”
“Never has Zambia had a government as calculatingly evil as Edgar Lungu's. A government where Cabinet sits and says we will kill democracy like this. We will make it easy for us to be corrupt with no consequences. Yes let's close Prime TV, lets buy menacing armoury with which to threaten citizens so that no questions can be asked.
Again, I ask myself - who do the people in Edgar Lungu's Cabinet think they are - gods over Zambians?” Miti concludes.