Police summon Martha Chizuma
Police have summoned Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) Director General Martha Chizuma to the National Police headquarters in Lilongwe Friday.
The police have summoned Chizuma for questioning over a leaked audio in which a person alleged to be her, speaking to a yet-to-identified person, claimed that some stakeholders such as lawyers and members of the Judiciary had been corrupted in the handling of the Zuneth Sattar case.
One of the lawyers who will represent Chizuma at the meeting, Innocencia Ottoba, confirmed the development to The Daily Times last evening.
“It is true. We are accompanying her there tomorrow [Friday],” she said, adding that other lawyers who will represent her are Pempho Likongwe and Martha Kaukonde.
A senior ranking police official at Area 30 also confirmed the matter but declined to give details.
The summoning of Chizuma by the police follows an order by the Mzuzu Senior Resident Magistrate Court for the Malawi Police Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to investigate Chizuma over the leaked audio.
The Mzuzu court gave the ruling after a resident of the city, one Frighton Phompho, applied to the court to ascertain if criminal charges can be brought against Chizuma over the audio.
According to Phompho, Chizuma committed an offence of directly revealing official information to an unauthorised person, contrary to regulation 4 (a) of the Corrupt Practices Act, and that of making use of speech capable of prejudicing a person against a party to judicial proceedings, in line with Section 113 (1) (d) of the Penal Code.
In a recent interview, DPP Steve Kayuni confirmed that the Mzuzu Court referred the matter to his office for further investigation.
The audio leak in January this year prompted President Lazarus Chakwera to summon Chizuma to a meeting, after which he made a public statement in which he reprimanded Chizuma.
Chakwera said some legal minds had advised him that Chizuma deserved to be relieved of her duties at ACB but he said he opted to stick with her to continue the fight against corruption in Malawi.
The Zuneth Sattar case has played out to be a dominant issue in Malawi following his arrest last year in the United Kingdom by the National Crimes Agency there.
