Former Solicitor General and Attorney General Musa Mwenye has supported calls for the introduction of lifestyle audits for officials holding senior government position.
Mr. Mwenye who served under the late President Michael Sata said those holding or have held senior positions should not fear undergoing a lifestyle audit.
Some organizations including Transparency International Zambia has demanded that government introduces lifestyle audits for all its senior official in a bid to curtail the accumulation of illicit wealth.
“All of us who have held or hold public office must be subjected to lifestyle audits. We should be asked what wealth we had before we were appointed to these public offices? What did we acquire during our time in public office and how did we acquire it?”
“If we claim we earned the money or acquired the wealth legitimately through our businesses, then we must show the taxes we paid or tax returns we filed. This is because if you sale goods or provide services legitimately, you have to pay taxes and/or file tax returns.”
Mr Mwenye said it is immoral for some public officials to live a lavish lifestyle when they are working for poor people.
“It is immoral for public officials to live lavish lives when they should be serving poor people. It is extremely worrying when a lot of the luxury cars on the roads are driven by those in public office and when public officials are the biggest ‘buyers’ in most night clubs.”
He stressed, “Public service is service, not an avenue to become millionaires.”
Mr Mwenye stated that he spoke against corruption even during the time of late President Sata’s administration.
“Some of us spoke and spoke very loudly internally but we just didn’t come on to Facebook to do it. In fact if you analyze, although mistakes were made under President Michael Sata MHSIP, there are no major financial scandals in those three years we served.”
“It’s because we fought corruption internally. During that period no less than 3 Ministers were prosecuted and fired for corruption and one Minister was actually convicted,” he recounted.
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