Friday, May 31, 2024 – Zambia’s former first lady, Esther Lungu, has been arrested on money laundering charges, her lawyer said Friday, days after her husband claimed he was being targeted as part of a political vendetta.
Lungu, 66, was held Thursday evening
alongside her two daughters, after being quizzed for hours about properties the
family holds in the capital, Lusaka, lawyer Makebi Zulu told AFP. She has now
been released on bail.
“The former first lady has been arrested for
being found in possession of properties suspected to be proceeds of crime and
money laundering charges,” Zulu said.
He said the properties, a block of flats in
Lusaka’s high-end New Kasama district, were built by Lungu’s husband, former
president Edgar Lungu, 67.
Zambia’s anti-drug agency said the one time
first lady had failed to give a “reasonable explanation” of how she acquired
the flats, which had a construction cost of 41 million kwacha ($1.6 million).
They were “reasonably suspected to be
proceeds of crime”, it added.
Edgar Lungu led copper-rich Zambia from 2015 to 2021, when he
lost an election to President Hakainde Hichilema, who had been a veteran
opposition leader before winning the vote by a landslide.
Last year, Lungu announced he was to return
to politics, with general elections scheduled for 2026. He has since complained
about a shrinking democratic space in the country and what he said was a
campaign of harassment against his family.
Police warned him against turning his
morning jogs into political events and last week he claimed he was “practically
under house arrest”, which authorities denied.
The latest arrest was not Esther Lungu’s
first run-in with police.
Last year her house was raided on
accusations she had stolen some vehicles.
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