Businessman claims Lusambo house ownership
By a Correspondent
An INTERESTED party, Mukuka Munkonge, has opposed the State’s application to forfeit property linked to jailed former Lusaka Province minister Bowman Lusambo.
Munkonge argued that the land and developments in Chamba Valley belong to him and not Lusambo.
This came to light during a forfeiture hearing before Lusaka chief resident magistrate Davies Chibwili Thursday.
Munkonge’s lawyer, Zyola Kakunka, testified in court that the two parties entered a lease agreement in 2018 that expired in 2022 and that the six incomplete blocks of flats at the centre of the dispute are not owned or controlled by Lusambo as alleged by the state.
He said he did not commit any crime that would justify seizure of the property and pleaded with the court to dismiss the State’s forfeiture application.
“Allowing the application by the State to forfeit the property will amount to unjust actions,” he argued.
And Lusambo, who was jailed for three years’ imprisonment with hard labour on two counts of possession of property established to be proceeds of crime last month, opposed the immediate forfeiture of the properties on the basis that his conviction was under appeal and therefore not final.
His lawyers, led by Jonas Zimba argued that allowing forfeiture while the appeal was pending would render the appeal academic and cause irreparable prejudice.
Lusambo said the scope of any forfeiture, according to the Forfeiture of Proceeds of Crime Act, considers confiscation limited to the value of the benefit derived from offending rather than wholesale seizure of property that may include legitimate or third-party interests.
But State Prosecutor Chawezi Nalwenga insisted that the civil forfeiture application under the Forfeiture of Proceeds of Crime Act should stand because forfeiture proceedings may run independently of criminal appeals and that property established as tainted may be subject to forfeiture.
