Why AG outsourced lawyers in Chizuma case
Attorney General (AG) Thabo Chakaka-Nyirenda has explained he decided to outsource private lawyers in the Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) Martha Chizuma’s case because there is unfounded public perception that there is bad blood between him and Chizuma.
He said in an interview he chose to stay away because lawyers’ ethics demand the legal practitioners to discharge their services to their level best.
The AG said if he did not stay away, he was to come into the case “gloves off as any lawyer fights to win a case” and people would have misinterpreted it as a personal fight emanating from the perceived “bad blood”.
“My decision not to be part of the case is purely on professional grounds. Perceptions are perceptions, but if repeated, people, regardless of how unfounded they are, begin to believe in them. So, I found it compelling to stay away,” said Nyirenda.
Newly appointed Malawi Law Society (MLS) executive director Chrispin Ngunde told The Daily Times this week that the process taken by the AG was a normal legal process.
Government last week hired former AG Kalekeni Kaphale, Chancy Gondwe and George Jivason Kadzipatike to represent police prosecutor in the Chizuma case, Levison Mangani, the Lilongwe Chief Resident Magistrate and Secretary to the President and Cabinet (SPC) Colleen Zamba.
The case has since been discontinued. In the leaked audio in which Chizuma was discussing an ongoing graft investigation, which she owned up when she met President Lazarus Chakwera where she was reprimanded, she described former Director of Public Prosecutions Steven Kayuni, some High Court judges among others as corrupt having allegedly received bribes from Ashok Nair, an agent of businessperson Zuneth Sattar who is on ACB’s radar.
