LAWYERS representing former President Rupiah Banda have written to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) questioning the legality, propriety and procedural correctness of the announcement that it had written to the Director of Public Prosecutions appealing his acquittal in the abuse of authority case when they do not have such powers, his lawyers have revealed.

Defence counsel Makebi Zulu has confirmed writing to ACC because it did not have such powers as to direct the DPP to appeal the Nigerian oil case which was also out of time and therefore statute barred.

He also expressed surprise that while the courts normally gave parties 30 days to appeal, the ACC was making its intention known after four months of the former president’s acquittal.

ACC spokesperson Timothy Moono said yesterday in Lusaka at a press briefing that the commission was considering appealing Mr Banda’s acquittal.

And the Gallant Youth in Zambia (GYZ) executive director Henry Mulenga has said the attempt by the ACC to appeal the acquittal of Mr Banda was misplaced and will just waste public resources.

Mr Mulenga said it was for this reason the commission had been doubted in the manner they handle cases, owing to the fact that Mr Banda’s oil deal had been investigated a long time ago before it was committed to the courts of law.

“These are the issues which could have been done a long time back by the same ACC, and the courts could have not even wasted their time, but wanting to appeal the case at this time will be a waste of time and resources, especially that the country is faced with various economic challenges that need attention,” he said. Mr Mulenga urged the Ministry of Justice not to entertain the ACC’s decision to appeal the case, alleging that there might be some individuals who wanted to waste resources for the reason best known to themselves.

Mr Moono said currently, the Commission had taken interested in various cases, citing former president Rupiah Banda‘s case in which he was acquitted of the alleged charge of abuse of authority of office in an oil deal involving a Nigerian company.

He said the process to appeal former President Banda’s acquittal had begun, but was only awaiting the feedback from the national prosecution authority.

And the ACC has recorded 387 reports of suspected cases of corruption during the third quarter of which 62 cases were under investigations.

Mr Moono said the Commission wished to clarify that not all irregularities that were reported in the Auditor-General’s reports fall within the mandate of the ACC, despite the long standing cordial relationship that exists between the office of the Auditor-General and the Anti-Corruption Commission. He said the Commission would endeavour to follow up on reports of suspected corruption and address the corruption scourge from different fronts.

Mr Moono said the Commission believed that a lot of progress had been made towards addressing corruption in Zambia as evidenced from both local and international data. He appealed to members of the public to continue being proactive and report all suspected cases of corruption to the Commission, considering that members of the public actually witnessed those corrupt transactions.

Mr Moono said Commission would not be derailed by any negative comments and unwarranted criticism from any person or entity, but would continue advancing the fight against corruption and strengthening partnership with stakeholders to achieve even greater results.

“According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) rating between 2010 and 2014 indicates corruption levels in Zambia are perceived to be decreasing,” he said. Mr Moono said the Commission continued to sit in as an observer capacity on a number of Tender Evaluation Committees constituted by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in order to ensure integrity of processes.

“The Commission continues to conduct different outreach programmes aimed at sensitizing as many people as possible on matters of corruption so that people’s mindsets begin to shift from acceptance of corruption as part of everyday life, to rejection and resistance of corrupt practices,” he said.

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The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted the logo of the American Red Cross.

In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.

The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.

The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.

“Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross,” McGovern wrote in a recent report marking the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

In other promotional materials, the Red Cross said it has helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.”

It has not provided details to back up the claim. And Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the earthquake, doubts the figure, pointing out the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

“No, no,” Bellerive said of the Red Cross’ claim, “it’s not possible.”

When the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, the Red Cross was facing a crisis of its own. McGovern had become chief executive just 18 months earlier, inheriting a deficit and an organization that had faced scandals after 9/11 and Katrina.

Inside the Red Cross, the Haiti disaster was seen as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity,” recalled one former official who helped organize the effort. Michelle Obama, the NFL and a long list of celebrities appealed for donations to the group.

The Red Cross kept soliciting money well after it had enough for the emergency relief that is the group’s stock in trade. Doctors Without Borders, in contrast, stopped fundraising off the earthquake after it decided it had enough money. The donations to the Red Cross helped the group erase its more-than $100 million deficit.

The Red Cross ultimately raised far more than any other charity.

A year after the quake, McGovern announced that the Red Cross would use the donations to make a lasting impact in Haiti.We asked the Red Cross to show us around its projects in Haiti so we could see the results of its work. It declined. So earlier this year we went to Campeche to see one of the group’s signature projects for ourselves.

Street vendors in the dusty neighborhood immediately pointed us to Jean Jean Flaubert, the head of a community group that the Red Cross set up as a local sounding board.

Sitting with us in their sparse one-room office, Flaubert and his colleagues grew angry talking about the Red Cross. They pointed to the lack of progress in the neighborhood and the healthy salaries paid to expatriate aid workers.

“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” said Flaubert. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”

The Red Cross’ initial plan said the focus would be building homes — an internal proposal put the number at 700. Each would have finished floors, toilets, showers, even rainwater collection systems. The houses were supposed to be finished in January 2013.

None of that ever happened. Carline Noailles, who was the project’s manager in Washington, said it was endlessly delayed because the Red Cross “didn’t have the know-how.”

Another former official who worked on the Campeche project said, “Everything takes four times as long because it would be micromanaged from DC, and they had no development experience.”

In January 2011, McGovern announced a $30 million partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The agency would build roads and other infrastructure in at least two locations where the Red Cross would build new homes.

But it took more than two and a half years, until August 2013, for the Red Cross just to sign an agreement with USAID on the program, and even that was for only one site. The program was ultimately canceled because of a land dispute.A Government Accountability Office report attributed the severe delays to problems “in securing land title and because of turnover in Red Cross leadership” in its Haiti program.Other groups also run into trouble with land titles and other issues. But they also ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’ six.

According to an internal Red Cross budgeting document for the project in Campeche, the project manager – a position reserved for an expatriate – was entitled to allowances for housing, food and other expenses, home leave trips, R&R four times a year, and relocation expenses. In all, it added up to $140,000.

Compensation for a senior Haitian engineer — the top local position — was less than one-third of that, $42,000 a year.

Shelim Dorval, a Haitian administrator who worked for the Red Cross coordinating travel and housing for expatriate staffers, recalled thinking it was a waste to spend so much to bring in people with little knowledge of Haiti when locals were available.

A CNN review of the Red Cross’ tax filings from July 2010 to June 2014 shows no detailed expenditures for its numerous relief programs, including in Haiti.

Those documents, called Form 990, do show details on salaries, including Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern McGovern’s $597,961 total compensation in the most recent filing.

“For each one of those expats, they were having high salaries, staying in a fancy house, and getting vacation trips back to their countries,” Dorval said. “A lot of money was spent on those people who were not Haitian, who had nothing to do with Haiti. The money was just going back to the United States.”

Soon after the earthquake, McGovern, the Red Cross CEO, said the group would make sure donors knew exactly what happened to their money.

The Red Cross would “lead the effort in transparency,” she pledged. “We are happy to share the way we are spending our dollars.”

Another signature project, known in Creole as “A More Resilient Great North,” is supposed to rehabilitate roads in poor, rural communities and to help them get clean water and sanitation.

But two years after it started, the $13 million effort has been faltering badly. An internal evaluation from March found residents were upset because nothing had been done to improve water access or infrastructure or to make “contributions of any sort to the well being of households,” the report said.

So much bad feeling built up in one area that the population “rejects the project.”

Instead of making concrete improvements to living conditions, the Red Cross has launched hand-washing education campaigns. The internal evaluation noted that these were “not effective when people had no access to water and no soap.” (The Red Cross declined to comment on the project.)

The group’s failures went beyond just infrastructure.

When a cholera epidemic raged through Haiti nine months after the quake, the biggest part of the Red Cross’ response a plan to distribute soap and oral rehydration salts — was crippled by “internal issues that go unaddressed,” wrote the director of the Haiti program in her May 2011 memo.

Throughout that year, cholera was a steady killer. By September 2011, when the death toll had surpassed 6,000, the project was still listed as “very behind schedule” according to another internal document.

The Red Cross said in a statement that its cholera response, including a vaccination campaign, has continued for years and helped millions of Haitians.

But while other groups also struggled early responding to cholera, some performed well.

“None of these people had to die. That’s what upsets me,” said Paul Christian Namphy, a Haitian water and sanitation official who helped lead the effort to fight cholera. He says early failures by the Red Cross and other NGOs had a devastating impact. “These numbers should have been zero.”

Given the results produced by the Red Cross’ projects in Haiti, Bellerive, the former prime minister, said he has a hard time fathoming what’s happened to donors’ money.

“Five hundred million dollars in Haiti is a lot of money,” he said. “I’m not a big mathematician, but I can make some additions. I know more or less the cost of things. Unless you don’t pay for the gasoline the same price I was paying, unless you pay people 20 times what I was paying them, unless the cost of the house you built was five times the cost I was paying, it doesn’t add up for me.”

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