THE Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) says it received 11 cases involving K53 million and US$ 80 million from the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) in 2020.

Responding to a query, DEC Public Relations Officer Mathias Kamanga said of these cases, investigations had been concluded and an arrest effected in one.

“DEC received a total of eleven cases from the Financial Intelligence Centre during the year 2020 with a combined amount of ZMW53,944,372.13 and US$80,764,598.86. A breakdown of the 11 cases is as follows: investigations concluded and arrests made, one. Referred to other Law Enforcement Agencies, three. Being jointly investigated with other Law Enforcement Agencies, two. Being investigated by DEC, five. The Commission is actively investigating the cases that were disseminated by the Financial Intelligence Centre during the year 2020 as well as other cases that were received from other sources. The public will be informed once investigations have been concluded on a case-by-case basis,” stated Kamanga.

The FIC reported that in 2020, the country lost about K3.1 billion through corruption, tax evasion, fraud, illegal mining and other vices, with corruption alone accounting for over K2.2 billion. The centre has also reported that during the year 2020, there was an increase in the use of cloned cards from criminal elements, whereby debit card details, stolen from unsuspecting members of the public, would be sold on the internet.

According to the FIC annual report for the year ended 31st December 2020, obtained from the website, the prominent predicate offences observed in the intelligence reports disseminated were tax evasion and corruption.

The report indicated that the value of disseminated intelligence reports in 2020 increased to ZMW 3.1 billion compared to ZMW 984 million in 2019.

It was reported that 24 cases of tax evasion were disseminated to law enforcement agencies in 2020 valued at K717 million compared to K144 million in 2019.