CHISHIMBA Kambwili’s wife, Carol, has told the Lusaka Magistrates’ Court that it is laughable that she is being asked to prove that Mwamba Kambwili is her son.

Carol has further told the court that Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services belongs to her and Mwamba, as directors of the company.

This is a matter in which Kambwili is charged with three counts of forgery, uttering a false document and giving false information to a public officer in relation to the registration of Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services.

It is alleged that on October 29, 2013, Kambwili, with intent to defraud or deceive, forged a ‘no change return’ (Companies Form 71) purporting to show that it was genuinely signed by his son Mwamba when in fact not.

It is further alleged that on the same date, Kambwili, knowingly and fraudulently, uttered the same document to an officer at Patents and Companies’ Registration Agency (PACRA).

Testifying before Principal Resident Magistrate David Simusamba via Zoom Video Communications, Wednesday, Carol, 48, told the court that she was a staff nurse at National Health Service in Leicester City, United Kingdom.

She added that she was married to Kambwili and that they had five children, among them, Mwamba Chishimba.

Carol said Mwamba was their only son born in October, 1993, in Chingola.

Asked by one of the defence lawyers, Keith Mweemba, what proof she had that Mwamba was their son, Carol laughed before she said, “do I have to prove to the court that Mwamba is my son…anyways, I have a birth record to show to the court that he is my son.”

After she positively identified Mwamba’s birth certificate, she added: “How can somebody tell me that my son is not my son? It’s laughable. Mwamba is my son, if somebody is doubting, I will tell them to do a DNA test.”

On Kambwili’s charges, Carol told the court that Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services was hers and Mwamba’s and that they were both directors in the company.

She explained that the company was incorporated in 2001 while the family was still in Chingola, contrary to EEP leader Chilufya Tayali’s claims that it was incorporated in 2013.

Defence continues today.

Previously, Kambwili testified that the complaint against the registration and directors of Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services was malicious and politically motivated.

Opening his defence, Kambwili, 51, told the court that Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services was incorporated by his wife Carol Chansa in 2001.

“This is in view of the fact that prior to Mr Tayali reporting this matter to the police, he held a press briefing where he made allegations and I quote ‘honourable Chishimba Kambwili had registered a company with a fictitious name with a view that he can be getting company contracts as a minister without being depicted that he was involved in that company’. During that briefing, he stated that the company was registered in 2013 when I was Minister of Youth and Sport in government. To the contrary, Mwamona was registered in August 2001, way before I was either an MP or a minister in government,” Kambwili said.

He said the genesis of the registration of Mwamona was that his wife, his sister Daisy Kambwili and himself were running a company called CK Scrap Metal Merchants and General Contractors Limited.

Kambwili added that he was also running a company called CK Technical Services Limited whose directors were himself, his wife and another person.

He said when he got involved in politics, the two businesses started having problems due to political interference by the MMD government then.

“There were instructions given to mining companies who were principal customers not to deal with any companies where Chishimba Kambwili was a director,” Kambwili said.

He said consequently, his wife decided that she needed to register a company with their son, Mwamba Chishimba Kambwili, and his younger sister Sampa Kambwili.

He said the only directors in Mwamona were his son and wife as they later on decided not to include his sister.

And Kambwili said the signature he was alleged to have forged in the first charge belonged to him.

He said he had never forged a document in his life and that he was a law abiding citizen.