Zimbabwe's Former Vice President Flees Country

Authorities in Zimbabwe says the country's former vice president has fled from anti-corruption agency after he was summoned over alleged criminal abuse of office.

The former VP Phelekezela Mphoko Phelekezela Mphoko 79, who served under long-time ruler Robert Mugabe was suppose to report at police in Bulawayo the country’s second city.  But the VP escaped as soon as officials from the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) approached his car. 

“We had agreed to meet at the police post at the magistrate’s court to record a warned-and- cautioned statement and have his fingerprints taken. When our officials approached his car, he drove away at high speed,” ZACC spokesman John Makamure informed Newsmen.

Mphoko, who reportedly resisted arrest over the weekend at his home in Douglasdale yesterday agreed to meet Zacc officers at Bulawayo Central Police Station.

His lawyers had gone to Zacc offices to submit his statement but the investigators demanded that he must appear before them.

“He is now a fugitive from justice,” the spokesman said, facing accusations of ordering the release from police custody of a chief executive officer and a non-executive director of the state-run roads authority. Mphoko was, along with current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, one of two vice presidents at the time of the ouster by the military of Mugabe in November 2017. He left the country as the coup unfolded but later returned. 

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