COURT HEARS HOW LUBINDA USED PROPERTY THAT DOES NOT EXIST TO OBTAIN $230,000
THE Lusaka High Court yesterday heard how PF vice-president Given Lubinda used property that does not exist to obtain US$230,000 from his Chinese counterparts when he served as Minister of Justice.
And Lubinda has admitted that he received more money from the Chinese that he did not disclose to the court at the beginning of trial.
Meanwhile, Lubinda told the court that only the Commander-In-Chief, who was Edgar Lungu at the time, had the power to command the army to escort trucks carrying Mukula from various parts of the country to the boarder.
He further told the court that it was wrong for the PF government to disobey a court order that rendered Jean Kapata’s ban on the harvesting, transportation and exportation of Mukula as illegal.
The former minister admitted that he has not been paying taxes on the income that his business had been generating over the years.
This is in a matter in which Lubinda, his former lands counterpart Jean Kapata and former president Edgar Lungu’s daughter, Tasila, sued News Diggers Media Limited and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in January 2020, demanding damages for libel.
Lubinda, Kapata and Tasila sued News Diggers Media Limited, its managing editor Mukosha Funga in connection with a story on illegal Mukula trade which was published, derived from an EIA report.
The trio is seeking damages against all the defendants for libel contained in News Diggers newspaper’s edition of December 6, 2019, titled “Lungu, Tasila in Mukula cartel” as well as damages against EIA for libel contained in its publication of December 2019, titled “Mukula cartel how timber trafficking networks plunder Zambian forests”.
When the matter came up yesterday for continuation of trial, Lubinda who was under cross examination said he made a mistake on the loan agreement he signed with the Chinese by putting a property that did not exist.
This was after defence layer Mutembo Nchito SC asked Lubinda to tell the court how he explain the loan to his wife.
“I would like to believe that you informed your wife when you paid the US$50,000 towards the property you were buying in Kingsland City?” Nchito SC asked, to which Lubinda responded in the affirmative.
“So where did you tell her this US$50,000 was coming from that you were paying?” Nchito SC asked.
In response, Lubinda said his wife knew about the loan, but Nchito SC asked him to State which loan he was referring to since the loan agreement which was before court was between Qingdao and Highview Investments and not him.
“The loan I got T court how you owned this property on November 18, 2016,” Nchito SC said.
“My explanation is that the stand number indicated in this agreement was erroneous, it is incomplete and that was an error when the agreement was being signed. There is no property with those numbers that exists. The property number should have been longer that this, because of the error 21 was instead recorded as 22,” Lubinda said.