Bad news for Zambia. If only corruption was limited to Africa though. In the west, our leaders cash in *after* they leave office because that somehow makes it all better. The Independent:
Prosecutors had chosen to pursue only a fraction of the monies alleged to have been looted by Mr Chiluba, which a UK court in 2007 estimated at more than $57m, in order to keep the case watertight. The former president's wife, Regina, was convicted in March by a Zambian court of receiving stolen goods but was freed pending her appeal and was in court with her husband to witness the acquittal.
Hopes of a conviction had been high, following the 2007 civil action, brought by Zambia's attorney general in Britain. The judge in that case had concluded that Mr Chiluba's official earnings after a decade in office amounted to $100,000 and yet, during the same period, he had spent five times that amount in a single shop, Boutique Basile, an exclusive outfitters in Geneva.
Investigators uncovered an extraordinary decade of spending while in office that saw the notoriously vain politician amass hundreds of designer outfits. The prosecution, led by Michael Sullivan QC, described accounts in several countries, including the UK, Switzerland and the Caribbean, that had been used to cover the president's lavish spending under the pretence of financing overseas intelligence operations.
Mr Justice Smith said in his ruling that Mr Chiluba should be "ashamed of himself" and ordered him to repay $57m in stolen monies. The judge remarked that "the president (unlike the emperor) needs to be clothed".
