A court granted bail to a Zambian archbishop Monday after he pleaded not guilty to a charge of possessing a vehicle suspected of being unlawfully obtained from the country’s tax authority.
Archbishop Alick Banda appeared in court Sept. 28 to answer a charge that he possessed a Toyota Hilux between 2021 and 2023 that was suspected of being taken unlawfully from the Zambia Revenue Authority.
Banda, who has led the Archdiocese of Lusaka since 2018, entered the not-guilty plea after the charge was read out at Lusaka Magistrates’ Court.
The court granted the 62-year-old archbishop bail of 80,000 Zambian kwacha (about $4,100) and ordered him to surrender his travel documents pending a trial, the Zambian news site mwebantu.com reported.
Zambia is a landlocked southern African country of around 22 million people, approximately 3.2 million of whom are Catholic. The Lusaka archdiocese, which serves around 1.8 million Catholics, is regarded as the national primatial see because it is based in Zambia’s capital city.
The case against Banda comes amid an investigation into the allegedly improper disposal of 22 vehicles belonging to
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