• Among the most serious revelations were those of five senior officers allegedly receiving close to K5 million in fictitious allowances.
• It appears that no such queries have been raised by the Office of the Auditor General to date.
• An attempt to raise such queries in 2019 apparently resulted in the dismissal of a named former Controller of Internal Audits.

Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) has called for accountability on the alleged looting of K100 Million at Ministry of Finance in the previous regime.
TI-Z Executive Director Maurice Nyambe said the organization is disheartened with the results of its investigative work concerning an alleged intricate network of organized looting that occurred at the Ministry of Finance between 2019 and 2021.
Mr. Nyambe revealed that among the most serious revelations were those of five senior officers allegedly receiving close to K5 million in fictitious sitting and daily subsistence allowances over the two-year period.
“It also emerged through the same investigation that among several accounts that the Ministry of Finance operates is one that has primarily been used to pay fictitious allowances, and yet it appears that no such queries have been raised by the Office of the Auditor General to date. An attempt to raise such queries in 2019 apparently resulted in the dismissal of a named former Controller of Internal Audits.”
“Our concern about all these revelations is heightened by the fact that the suspected intricate network responsible for this alleged looting has reportedly been in existence for a long time, spanning three different governments, including the current one. As TI-Z, we have always been of the view that Zambia’s corruption problem is facilitated to a large extent by systemic weaknesses at different levels of public finance management, and the findings from this investigation appear to confirm this,” Mr. Nyambe said.
Mr. Nyambe further called on Law Enforcement Agencies and oversight bodies such as the Office of the Auditor General to urgently look into the matter so as to protect the country’s public resources from being looted indiscriminately.
He also urged the general public, the media and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to join calls for accountability on the alleged looting of public resources.
“We are confident that necessary action will be taken in order to insulate our country’s public resources from being looted indiscriminately by people whose sole objective is to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority Zambians who continue to yearn for good social service delivery to make their lives better.
“Although the alleged activities highlighted happened during the previous regime, the systemic apparatus that facilitated the looting apparently remains active to date, and the need to take appropriate action to dismantle it cannot be overemphasized,” he stated.