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Zambia ex-president acquitted of corruption charges

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba was acquitted Monday of charges stealing money from the country's treasury while in office from 1991-2001. Chiluba and two Zambian businessmen, Faustin Kabwe and Aaron Chungu, faced a total of 12 counts of theft of public funds for their alleged involvement in taking $488,000 when the treasury deposited payments to two US security firms into a London bank account controlled by the Zambia Security and Intelligence Services (ZSIS). The court found insufficient evidence to convict Chiluba, but Chungu, the former director-general of ZSIS, and Kabwe were founding guilty of being in possession of stolen funds, and Chungu was sentenced to nine months in prison. Chiluba's wife Regina was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison in March on a separate charge of receiving stolen funds. Prosecutors plan to appeal Chiluba's acquittal. Chiluba was ordered to stand trial on the corruption charges in February 2008. In a separate case, Chiluba was ordered by a London court in July 2007 to pay $58 million in fines to Zambia to compensate for other funds stolen during Chiluba's decade in power. The suit was brought in Britain by Zambian officials because Chiluba and his associates held the assets in the UK and other European countries.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on August 17, 2009 (boomark / email).