LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-The former Secretary to the President and Cabinet Colleen Zamba orchestrated a grand scheme to influence the sale of Amaryllis Hotel.
Zamba is said to have pushed hard for the sale despite the Public Service Pension Trust Fund (PSPTF) board rejecting the move in 2024.
Suspended principal officer George Jim who is appearing Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday night evthat commitment letters were issued under directive from a high office in the public sector.
Jim also told the committee that Zamba and director of legal services in the Office of the President and Cabinet, Chizaso Nyirongo, were in direct communication with the seller and the fund secretariat during the period in question.
MPs are pressing Jim on whether external forces deliberately manufactured contractual obligations that did not exist.
The suspended principal officer of the Public Service Pension Trust Fund George Jim has told Parliament that legal opinions obtained by the fund concluded there was no binding agreement with the seller of the Amaryllis Hotel.
According to Jim, this means the fund can walk away without breaking any contract.
Jim told Parliament Public Accounts Committee that after the board was reconstituted, it stuck to its earlier decision not to go ahead with the investment.
“The legal opinion concluded that no binding agreement existed between the fund and Yusuf Investment Limited, allowing the fund to reassess its position,” said Jim.
He added that an external legal opinion confirmed the fund could withdraw without breaching the contract.
Jim also detailed the regulatory hurdles that left the fund without a legally recognised board for months.
Members of Parliament (MPs) were also told that suspended Public Service Pension Trust Fund principal officer George Jim wrote letters directing the sale to proceed under pressure from Zamba, a move that went against a decision by the board.
Jim is appearing before a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee at Parliament Building in Lilongwe, where he is being grilled on the circumstances surrounding the transaction.
He told the committee that the first directive was issued on March 7, 2024, as an urgent response to a meeting that had just ended, adding that looking back, the decision may not have been the best.
He said a second directive was written on March 18.
But he told the committee that throughout the process, he was getting pressure from Zamba.
“There was the invisible hand of external pressures. The letter was written under duress from the office,” said Jim.
MPs were pressing Jim on why he went ahead to write the letters when the board had not approved the move.
Jimu also told PAC that the fund was being drawn into meetings chaired by Zamba and steered by the director of legal services in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC), Chizaso Nyirongo—at a time when the fund had no legally constituted board.
Jim testified that despite the board being dissolved and new trustees unrecognised by OPC, the fund was still summoned to high‑level meetings and directed to issue commitment letters for the transaction.
According to documents tabled before the committee, a meeting on March 6 2024 in Mzuzu was chaired by Zamba, with attendance from OPC members, including Nyirongo and former Statehouse Chief of Staff Prince Kapondamgaga.
Jim told the committee that commitment letters were dispatched to the seller Yusuf Investments Limited on March 7‑8, 2024, under the directive of the director of legal affairs and the chair of the Investment Committee.
The suspended principal officer further said that even after the second cohort of trustees ended in September 2024 and a new cohort licensed in December 2024 went unrecognised by OPC, the fund was pressed to attend another meeting in June 2025 concerning a long‑pending transaction.
“We had no board, but we were still being called into meetings,” Jim said.
He also clarified that under the fund’s governance structure, the principal officer does not have voting rights on board resolutions.
Contracts and board resolutions, he explained, are signed by the board chair and fund secretary under trustee article 15—not by the principal officer.
Attorney General (AG) Frank Mbeta is this morning facing PAC.