Kasanda resorts to ‘blackmail’, threatens to spill the beans
DETAINED gold dealer Shadreck Kasanda has threatened to implicate State House if he is not immediately released from police cells.
Kasanda was arrested last Thursday in connection with a fake gold deal that unfolded at the Kenneth Kaunda International Airport over a week ago.
But in a latest twist of drama, Kasanda is now blackmailing the State to let him go or he will ‘spill the beans’.
He said he will not accept to be a stooge in the scandal and preserve the honor of influential plot one employees, when he was only trying to be a responsible whistle-blower.
Kasanda’s lawyers Makebi Zulu advocates have written a letter to the Attorney General over President Hakainde Hichilema’s commentary on the unearthed gold scam at the Airport on August 14.
Kasanda and his co-accused Mahogany Air proprietor Dr Jim Belemu, his employee Patrick Kawanu and ZamQlik solutions limited director Oswald Diangamo are facing a charge of disposing minerals suspected to be proceeds of crime.
According to the Letter Makebi Zulu advocates stated that the President commented on the criminal activities at the the airport and drew conclusions prejudicial to Kasanda having a fair trial, when he was cognisant of the judicial process.
Kasanda’s advocates said the President’s comment is honored and his sentiments cannot be taken lightly.
They claimed the decision by the State to criminally pursue Kasanda is illegal in line with Section 43(1)(2)of the public interest disclosure (protection of whistleblowers).
Kasanda’s lawyers said DEC disregarded the disclosure made by the businessman to a security personnel after it joined the investigations midway and has gone on a tagnet issuing media statements suggesting that the disclosure was inconsequential and deemed Kasanda not to have been a whistleblower.
They stated that arresting Kasanda to the exclusion of named persons behind the whole deal who include known personnel at State house who after the ordeal accompanied the President to Angola is unjust.
“Upon returning from Angola the said officials have not been interrogated or arrested,”Kasanda’s lawyers stated.
“It is our demand that the State drops the charges forthwith and release our client from unlawful detention, failing which we shall be left with no option but to commence proceedings for appropriate remedies which action shall contain full disclosure of the information.”
They proposed that since Kasanda is ‘clean’ as the late KK’s handkerchief and snitched on State house officials in good faith the State ought to have made him their witness.
“Instead the public humiliation and victimization of our client have characterized the conduct of the State in an attempt to render him a scapegoat for matters well within the State’s knowledge,” said Kasanda’s lawyers.
“Our client shall where appropriate report the known breach of the law and maladministration by the DEC to the public protector for investigations.”
By Mwaka Ndawa
Kalemba
