Court Judge Annabel Mtalimanja has adjourned to May 30, 2022 a judicial review case involving Anti-Corruption Bureau Director General Martha Chizuma over a leaked phone conversation with unidentified person.
The adjournment follows submission of two more sworn statements by the applicant.
However, the interested party Frighton Mphompho through his lawyer Michael Goba Chipeta objected filing the sworn statements arguin,g that they do not comply with court earlier direction that they should be submitted by May 17 2022 deadline.
Delivering her determination, Judge Mtalimanja allowed filing of the statements but said the court will not entertain further adjournment on accounts of documents.
In an interview, Goba Chipeta said the fresh sworn statements will not affect the review on their part as interested party.
“And secondly that this is a review is not a trial, so proliferation of affidavits basically turn a review into a trial.
It will not because we have been given more time so that we can go through them through the affidavits and make representations as well, so it will not affect us in anyway or other way,” maintained Goba Chipeta.
Meanwhile, the applicant through one of the lawyers Martha Kaukonde said the filed statements have significant impact on their grounds for review.
She said: “Essentially the we are trying to establish who really the applicant is and where it stays because in the initial application he indicated that he hails from Mzuzu.
So if you are aware I think there was a press release from the United Democratic Front (UDF) saying that this is a person from Chikwawa, so we are just we just following up on that.”
The applicant is seeking court’s determination on a direction by the Mzuzu Senior Resident Magistrate’s court which ordered an investigation into the leaked audio.