. SIMAATA (left), KALUSHA (right)

By SANDRA MWILA –
FOOTBALL administrator Simataa Simataa has asked Kalusha Bwalya to step down as Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) president to pave way for thorough investigations by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
The ACC are currently investigating FAZ on various allegations of corruption, including some revelations made by former treasurer Kelvin Mutafu.
Simataa, a long-time adversary of Kalusha, said in an interview that even the other FAZ officials who were summoned to the ACC offices for questioning should step down.
He urged Kalusha and other FAZ executive members under the ACC investigations to cooperate by giving information for swift investigations.
“Kalusha and others that are being investigated should simply step aside to allow thorough investigations. If they don’t want to step-down, the FAZ constitution gives appropriate power to the executive committee to suspend members that are being investigated for corruption.
“If I was him (Kalusha), I would have camped at the ACC for the investigations to be swift and for his reputation to be cleared,” Simataa said.
Simataa said it would be appropriate and a mark of honour for all the FAZ executive committee members named in the corruption investigations to step down since FAZ followed the FIFA standards.
He said the FAZ executive had the power to suspend members who were being investigated for corruption to pave way for investigations.
“It’s good that the ACC finally summoned Kalusha. These investigations have been on for a long time and it was giving us an impression that ACC is slow and maybe these people are too big for them. Let them do their job and bring these investigations to a conclusion,” Simataa said.
Sources disclosed to the Times that ACC was investigating Kalusha over corruption allegations made by Mutafu.
Mutafu reported to the ACC that FAZ was embroiled in corrupt practices which led to the termination of the Nike sponsorship deal.
The former treasurer also alleged that there was a match ticketing scam at Football House which was seeing the tickets airlifted from South Africa instead of letting local companies handle the business.
Mutafu claimed that his efforts to stop the wrongs just made him enemies with some fellow executive members and eventually got pushed out as chairperson of the Match Organising Committee.
The FAZ executive committee has co-opted Rix Mweemba as treasurer, replacing Mutafu.