THE Committee of Citizens has challenged former Task Force on Corruption chairperson Max Nkole to deny that he had written letters to the Republican vice-president asking that the case involving former president Frederick Chiluba be discontinued.

Executive director Gregory Chifire said yesterday that Mr Nkole should in the next seven days publicly admit that he had written several letters to the vice-president asking that Dr Chiluba's case be dropped because of lack of evidence.

Mr Chifire said if Mr Nkole did not respond, the committee would publish the letters that he wrote to the vice-president.

He said it was surprising that Mr Nkole was changing positions on the case of the former president who had been cleared by the courts of law.

He also said the revelation of the huge amounts that were paid to lawyers at the Task Force on Corruption could not pass without comment.

Mr Chifire said Mr Nkole should not dispute the figures released by the Government.

He said Zambians should know the truth because a huge amount of money was paid to a few lawyers at the expense of the many suffering Zambians.

He also said that there should be an audit at the Task Force on Corruption so that people could know how it spent money.

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Nkole failed as his phone remained unanswered by Press time.