THE people who were committing crimes under the PF government truly had no boundaries. These people had absolutely no heart for anyone. The scandals that are coming out demonstrate that they were ready to profit from anything, including death. This regime was worse than a mafia organisation. Mafias kill people but they have rules. The mafia will tell you, don’t touch the women and children. Even when they are selling drugs, they will tell you, don’t sell to children and keep away from school premises. Mafias have rules, they stick to some sort of code. They are not so heartless in making money. But the crimes committed in this previous regime show that there was no consideration for humanity, it was all about money.

There are so many questions that arise when we look at the fake Covid vaccines scandal. We have spoken to medical experts inside and outside government, and what they are telling us is that to import vaccines and to put them on the plane, you need to have a clearance letter from the receiving country. Vaccines are not like ordinary drugs, they are not oranges which you can pick from a shelf and transport. This is why the supplier needs a Pharmaceutical Licence to sell, store, distribute and supply the vaccines. As far as we know, even the airline that transports the vaccines needs documents showing that the consignment has been cleared for landing so that it does not become a burden when denied a landing clearance in the destination country.

But ZAMRA is distancing itself from this consignment, ZRA also says they never issued any permit to the importer, and the Ministry of Health equally says it has nothing to do with it. So how possible is it that Findlay and his Chrismar Earthmoving Equipment company managed to bring these vaccines without any document? Vaccines can’t just arrive at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport without any paperwork. Where is the paperwork for this consignment? There is a system for procuring drugs and there is a system for importing them, it’s impossible for anyone to evade all government authorities and just land medicines, unless that person is a very experienced drug smuggler. If all the government authorities in Zambia are saying they had nothing to do with this, then we have criminals on the loose.

The other question that we must not ignore is around the name of Mr Findlay’s company that is behind this. How did Chrismar Earthmoving Equipment find itself involved in medicine supply? According to PACRA rules, when you register a company, you state the business that you will be involved in. If you want to do business in the hospitality industry, you state so, if it’s construction, you indicate on the company registration documents. This Chrismar Earthmoving Equipment was involved in all the sectors and industries. It is found in the hospitality industry, it has been involved in the fuel procurement tenders, we also saw the company getting road construction contracts and now it is supplying Covid vaccines. Can all this happen without someone top in government facilitating?

It appears to us that there has been no interest by any government authority to investigate this matter and to get to the bottom of it in establishing how the vaccines found themselves in the country. This is why no one is complaining that ZAMRA destroyed the vaccines before any investigations could be concluded. In plain language, this is called abetting a crime. Mr Findlay is not a clean man, but there is no business transaction that he has done with the Zambian government without anyone from the inside facilitating the dubious deals. This is one of them; there is someone at ZAMRA, someone at Ministry of Health, someone at Zambia Revenue Authority and someone in State House who made this fake Covid vaccine a near success.

Were these vaccines smuggled out of Dubai? Were they really Covid vaccines or this was something else? In our view, ZAMRA has jumped the gun to protect certain interests. It would appear that they decided to destroy this evidence on the presumption that there was no crime committed and there would be no one to prosecute. But this is very strange because when we scrutinize the statement from ZAMRA, we see that they are not calling these substances as vaccines, they are calling them suspected vaccines.

Indeed, we must look at this matter with a broad sense of inquisition. We say this because it is possible that these were not even Covid vaccines. The reason why we say this could have been something else rather than vaccines is because the reported consignment does not make any business sense at all. Why would someone go and order 10,000 Covid vaccines at US$150, 000? What that means is that the vaccines themselves were ordered at US$15 dollars each and if we add transport and other logistical costs, then in order to make profit those vaccines would have to be sold at something close to US$100. Now in Zambia, vaccines are free. Even the government has been getting the vaccines for free from well-wishers, meaning that no one in Zambia would be willing to buy these vaccines.

When we look at the number 10,000, that is also such a small figure because it means it would only carter for a maximum 5000 people considering double dosage. The third point is that Covid vaccines in Zambia are only administered by government authorized health facilities. There is no private Covid vaccination allowed. All vaccines that have come into Zambia so far have been supplied to the Ministry of Health or donated. No sane person can illegally import a drug consignment that is meant for donation to the government.

So what could have been the motivation for the importation of ‘vaccines’? Or were they really vaccines or it was other substances brought into the country under the guise of Covid vaccine? ZAMRA needs to explain what they destroyed, there is more to the fake Covid vaccines than meets the eye.