Minister, 40 MPs disregard assets law

One Cabinet minister and 40 members of Parliament (MPs) are said to have contravened the assets declaration law by not declaring their assets in the 2016/17 financial year despite several reminders.

However, courtesy of an agreement between members of Parliament’s Monitoring Committee and the Office of the Public Officers’ Declarations, the names of the errant Cabinet minister— whom The Nation understands is female—and the MPs are yet to be released.

But according to details of an annual report on public officer‘s declarations and compliance status, the Office of the Director of Assets has also flagged out during its recent verification exercise some 10 yet to be disclosed public officers whose declarations have raised suspicions and are being probed.

The directorate presented the report to the Parliamentary Monitoring Committee—which comprises three parliamentary committees of Public Appointments, Legal Affairs and Budget and Finance—on Saturday in Salima.

However, the report, presented during the open plenary where journalists were present, did not include the names of the errant public officials.

The committee’s stand-in chairperson Collins Kajawa informed the meeting that the names will only be submitted to the House in a separate report.

During the presentation, director of assets declarations Christopher Tukula said his office has written the Cabinet minister and the MPs involved several reminders on the issue to no avail.

He said that reporting the matter to Parliament was a last resort as provided for in the law and the parliamentary committee was at liberty to take any action as provided by the law.

Tukula said the directorate will soon be requesting interviews with the public officials whose assets during the verification exercise raised suspicion due to differences in what was declared and what the directorate has uncovered during the exercise.

He, however, was quick to add that the discrepancies in the declarations and the verified information may not necessarily mean all cases are due to officers deliberately providing false information.

Tukula said experience indicates some cases can be due to justified information gaps and officers are cleared after providing convincing explanations.

For those to be caught in the wrong, Tukula said the office will submit recommendations for prosecution to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions as required by law.

Speaking after the presentation of the report, Kajawa said the committee will meet soon to discuss its content and map the way forward.

“The committee is impressed by the work of the office and we will meeting to see what specific action we will be taking,” said Kajawa.

During the physical verification, over 200 declarations were sampled using random and purposive sampling which allowed the office to target six political leaders and eleven senior government officials.

According to the presentation, a total of 12 398 officers declared their assets by June 2018.

The assets law was passed in 2013 amid fears that public officers including politicians and senior government officials were accumulating excessive wealth through corruption and abuse of office.

Previously, some Cabinet ministers also failed to provide their declarations to the office, but after some explanations they were not punished by the monitoring committee.