By Mamer Abraham<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The family of former minister for finance Arthur Akuien Chol has vowed to challenge the former SPLM Secretary General-turned-opposition, Pagan Amum, in a court of law.<\/p>\n
This came days after Akuein launched his memoir titled \u201cA LIFE FIGHTING FOR MY PEOPLE” in Juba, which compelled Pagan to challenge Chapter 17 of the book titled \u201cDeclaring My Innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a rebuttal to the viral challenge, Angok Arthur Akuien Chol, a former Member of Parliament (MP), declared that his family was ready to file a lawsuit in a court of law.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in a shallow political ambush, Mr. Pag\u2019an Amum, the former SPLM Secretary General, hijacked Chapter 17 of the book titled \u201cDeclaring My Innocence\u201d with a baseless onslaught,\u201d Angok said in a statement extended to the No. 1 Citizen Daily Newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the family would like to inform all the South Sudanese that it\u2019s ready to challenge Cde Pag\u2019an in the court of law as far as his latest claim is concerned, though he had abused the state powers earlier to safeguard himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arthur said last week that the accusations labeled against him by Pagan Amum and Luka Biong were not \u201csubstantial\u201d because the money alleged to have been stolen was paid to a man called Isaac Makur and Silvano Jal Malith.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2006, I was accused of misusing and stealing public funds. The accusations were rumored by Cde. Pag\u2019an Amum and Luka Biong, but the allegation wasn\u2019t substantial as the sum of money they concocted was paid to Mr. Isaac Makur and Mr. Silvano Jal Malith, the then signatories to the account,\u201d said Arthur.<\/p>\n
He argued that Pagan was among the many who were striving to tarnish people\u2019s images, and therefore his family had adequate evidence to produce in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs one of the first generation of South Sudanese political leaders, the one who devoted his life to improving the quality of life for our people, it is becoming clear that there are people who want to repudiate their mishaps with lies and Cde. Pag\u2019an Amum is one of them. Therefore, I and my family hold enough pieces of evidence to prove him wrong in court if he files the case,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
When contacted for a comment, Pagan said he was waiting for a piece of advice from his lawyer, stressing that it was a legal matter and therefore he might not comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a legal matter now; I desist from making any further comments to the media not to prejudice the case. I am still waiting for my lawyer’s advice,\u201d he stated in a response extended to this outlet.<\/p>\n
Pagan\u2019s side of the story<\/strong><\/p>\n Following the publication of Arthur\u2019s book, Pagan wrote a letter published by Paanluel Wel bloggers that he would drag Arthur and his book publisher to court.<\/p>\n Pagan claimed that he (Arthur) was trying to cover his mistakes by writing a book, yet he was involved in the misappropriation of funds, and therefore the court fined him 3,000,000 SSP.<\/p>\n \u201cThe court established that the Ministry of Finance did transfer $48,000,000 to the SPLM account, of which I was not even a signatory. He was found liable and was fined 3,000,000 SSP as compensation for damages. Now that he has published this book, I will take him to court in another civil case together with his publisher,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cBesides, he is contradicting himself with different versions. I ordered a book from Amazon. This has nothing to do with his accusation of corruption or arrest, for example. He is trying to cover it by mixing apples and oranges. Poor Arthur.\u201d<\/p>\n Pagan dismissed the claims that Arthur had sent $30,000,000 in SSP into his personal account, adding that Arthur failed to prove himself in court.<\/p>\n No. 1 Citizen Newspaper could not reach the other people mentioned in the letter written by Arthur\u2019s family for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Mamer Abraham The family of former minister for finance Arthur Akuien Chol has vowed to challenge the former SPLM Secretary General-turned-opposition, Pagan Amum, in a court of law. This came days after Akuein launched his memoir titled \u201cA LIFE FIGHTING FOR MY PEOPLE” in Juba, which compelled Pagan[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/The-Former-SPLM-Secretary-General-Pagan-Amum-L-and-the-Former-Minister-for-Finance-Arthur-Akuein-Chol.-Photo-file.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19151,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19149\/revisions\/19151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}