Transparency International Zambia says it excepts that all the corruption cases which were referred to the Drug Enforcement Commission by the Financial Intelligence Centre will now be acted upon now that Mary Chirwa is in charge of the law enforcement agency.

In an interview, Thursday, TIZ executive director Maurice Nyambe said Chirwa’s move from FIC to DEC was a positive step.

“We hope that a lot of cases that the FIC forwarded to the DEC, because the FIC could only refer cases, they do not have any prosecutorial authority or mandate, and so we hope that many of the cases that they referred to the DEC related to financial crimes and other crimes of that nature we hope that now they will come alive and that we will see prosecutions starting to happen in relation to those cases,” said Nyambe.

“We have taken note of the President’s decision to appoint Chirwa as Director General at the DEC. We think that this is a very positive step and a step in the right direction. You will recall that during the time that Chirwa was at FIC, it distinguished itself as one if the state institutions that was actually very forthwith in terms of their mandate but also an institution that was able to uncover a lot Of cases of financial crimes as well as cases related to corruption. And so we do hope that given Chirwa is now heading an institution or will now be heading an institution that has the power to prosecute cases, we are very confident that we are going to see a very new way of working even at the DEC. So we are very excited with the appointment and we believe that it is one that is going to contribute to a great deal even to the fight against corruption in Zambia.”