Henry Banda, son of Zambia's ex-president Rupiah Banda, lives in South Africa in self-imposed exile. And depending on who you speak to, he is either a refugee or a fugitive, the innocent victim of political persecution in his home country, or a corrupt man using his ill-gotten wealth to stay as far from justice as he can, for as long as he can.

Banda is "wanted" by the Zambian government in connection with somewhat imprecise allegations of corruption. Even before considering the mudslinging and smoke and mirrors that are the hallmarks of such a politically charged case, it is hard to pin down just what Banda - a divisive figure in his country since his mad dash south following his father's defeat in elections last year - is thought to have done.

He became "too powerful" during his father's short term as president of Zambia from November 2008, appears to be the limit of consensus among Zambian citizens, commentators and journalists. And despite putting him on an Interpol wanted list, the Zambian government does not seem to have gone any significant way towards preparing charges against him. It has, though, requested an extradition from the South African government. Pretoria's answer is that Banda is a South African permanent resident with rights of citizenship, and that South Africa will not hand over anyone to foreign law enforcement agencies without charges against them.

"We need solid charges before any extradition can take place. In this case, all we have heard is that the gentleman in question is wanted for questioning," said Moses Chikane, South Africa's High Commissioner to Zambia, last month.

Curiously, the Zambian police have said they will first need to "speak to" the younger Banda before they can formally charge him.

His lawyers, Amsterdam and Peroff of Toronto and London, have petitioned the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, and the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, in an attempt to overturn the Interpol red alert and halt what they call the Zambian state's "unlawful treatment" of Banda.

Banda's lead counsel, international law expert Robert Amsterdam, says his client's treatment by Zambian authorities plays out to a familiar pattern observable in countries with questionable levels of respect for the rule of law. "It's part of a pattern of presenting attacks on the opposition or political enemies as if they are attacks on criminality or corruption. The person so accused can never recover from allegations of corruption, even when there are eventually no charges."

Amsterdam would know. He has been at the centre of some of the most notorious criminal and "anti-corruption" cases in modern politics everywhere, from Venezuela to Thailand, Nigeria to Singapore, with Russia providing possibly his most famous client. In 2003, Amsterdam was retained by the Russian oil company Yukos-Group MENATEP to defend former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Former billionaire magnate Khodorkovsky is currently serving an eight-year sentence in Russia for fraud and tax evasion, in a case seen largely as the result of a falling out between Khodorkovsky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Amsterdam was also hired in 2010 to represent deposed former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was then considered a fugitive by the new government in Bangkok and Thai law enforcement authorities.

In both cases, Amsterdam's strategy was to present his client as the victim of nefarious state actions by an insecure government determined to crush its political enemies. The strategy consisted of issuing a large number of public statements, manifestos, reports and other often "fire and brimstone" documentation condemning the actions of the relevant governments and bringing his clients' plight to the attention of the international community, usually through UN institutions. Last year, he issued an 80-page "White Paper" detailing what he charged were human rights and international law violations committed during what he considered to be the "Bangkok massacres" by the "royalist" government in Thailand.

Among Yukos executives and other members of the Khordokosky clan, Amsterdam's strategy has caused some measure of unease because of a belief that it focuses too much on the politics of the case and too little on the law, and his defense was based on the systematic denunciation of the political aspects of Khodorkovsky's trial, neglecting at some points to respond formally to the charges he was indicted for. It was almost a refusal to countenance that there could be any charges to answer, or that the motives of the legal authorities leading the charges could be anything but political.

While no charges can be answered to - since none have yet been made - in the Henry Banda case, it is clear that the same strategy is at work. Amsterdam has the facts of Zambian politics fully at his command. There does not appear to be a single act of political malfeasance committed or planned by the government of President Michael Sata of which he is not aware. In an interview with Southern Africa Report, he was notably keen to discuss Zambia's ruling Patriotic Front's (PF) fraternal relationship with Zimbabwe's corrupt and deeply unpopular Zanu-PF.

"President Sata's actions - from deregistering the largest opposition party in Zambia to constant attacks on the judiciary - are the first steps in the attempt to turn Zambia into Zimbabwe," he says. Powerful, emotive stuff, possibly even prescient, this may be - but inadmissible in court as a defense against charges of corruption and fraud. For even if the Zambian police have been laggard in formulating formal charges against Banda, there are serious matters that he would be, even if only for his own image, better off answering to the satisfaction of Zambia's people.

In a snap election called following the death of President Levy Mwanawasa in August 2008, Banda Snr became the fourth president of Zambia at the helm of the Movement for Multi-party Democracy (MMD), the centre-left party that had ended decades of one-party rule in 1991.

According to sources in the country, Banda Jnr - who had spent most of his time in his adopted country of South Africa, running a Johannesburg-based business - almost immediately became a prominent presence in government circles in Lusaka. He became embroiled in the tendering processes in almost all of Lusaka's 23 government ministries, supplying to this department, procuring for that one, acting as an agent for many others in their dealings with the private sector.

It wasn't long before his power was resented even among Cabinet ministers. The most damning allegation against Banda is that, when his father's government cast around for suitors to privatise the state communications monopoly Zamtel, it was he and then-communications minister, Dora Siliya, who sourced a valuator for the company without putting the contract out to tender. The valuators, RP Capital Partners, were paid US$12,5-million for the work when, it is alleged, the original agreed fee was US$2-million. Siliya and Banda have denied this.

In 2009, Henry was also accused in the Zambian Parliament and media of brokering an allegedly corrupt deal in which Kenyan oil trading company Dalbit Petroleum clinched a multimillion-dollar contract to supply finished petroleum products to Zambia. In August 2009, Zambia's former finance minister, Situmbeko Musokotwane, allowed the Energy Ministry to import diesel duty-free.

But because the ministry did not have the capacity to do this, it contracted - without following tender procedures - Kenya's Dalbit and the Independent Petroleum Group of Kuwait to import the commodity at 0% duty. Dalbit was to supply 1,4-million litres of diesel and petrol for two years through the ports of Dar es Salaam and Beira. Because Zambia's only refinery, at Ndola, had been closed for maintenance, Dalbit had an effective monopoly. Banda was accused of acting as the Kenyan firm's agent.

Amsterdam calls all of these very specific allegations "a joke". A commission of inquiry set up by Sata to probe the Zamtel fiasco, which was not headed by a judicial officer and was stuffed with Sata's own appointees, found no credible link between Banda and the companies implicated in the Zamtel saga.

For Amsterdam the real story behind all of the mud being slung at his client is the attempt by the PF to turn Zambia into a one-party state by systematically destroying the opposition, in particular the MMD. And the reason his client - who has never been a politician - is at the centre of these attempts is that he acted as his father's campaign manager for his unsuccessful re-election bid last year. According to Amsterdam, Banda was given a "hit list" by a person in the current government sympathetic to his father, detailing the names of people considered "enemies" of the PF and who had to be neutralised politically. His own name topped the list, and everything that was prophesied by this covert sympathiser has since come to pass with alarming accuracy.

Essentially, Henry Banda does not feel safe in Zambia and does not trust the authorities there to act justly and within the law should he return to co-operate with their investigations. He is happy to answer whatever questions they care to put to him, they are even welcome to come and visit him in Johannesburg to interview him, but they will not be seeing him in Lusaka any time soon.

While it is curious that the Zambian authorities do not yet have charges to put to Banda - which would surely help them clear a hurdle in Pretoria - it is also worth remembering that the allegations, even if they are now tainted with their associations with the political machinations of a PF government trying to establish its hegemony, predate the change of power that took place in Zambia last September. Opposition parliamentarians from the PF and other smaller parties called for independent investigations into Banda's alleged role in government tendering as long ago as 2009, mainly as a result of popular discontent in the country regarding his role.

If Banda wishes to be welcome in his country again - and that may ultimately be the gift of the Zambian public, not the PF government, to give - he will need to offer plausible legal answers to these accusations to go along with his PR war against Sata's government.

For its part, the government will sooner or later have to put up or shut up. Given that Banda is effectively a naturalised South African (his wife and children are South African citizens), it is unlikely to ever get their hands on him based on the flimsy basis - at least formally - of its case as it currently stands. It has refused to travel south to speak to him, instead demanding that he go back "home", or even that Pretoria hand him over. This will not happen, and insisting on it does nothing but raise unnecessary diplomatic tensions.