Malawian top banker Thom Mpinganjira sentenced to 9 years imprisonment in judge bribery case

BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)–High Court Judge Dorothy DeGabrielle has sentenced business mogul, Thomson Mpinganjira to nine years imprisonment with hard labour.

Mpinganjira, who is the first Malawian to own a bank, was answering six charges under the Corrupt Practices Act relating to attempting to induce High Court judges Mike Tembo and Healy Potani to exercise their functions corruptly by offering them K100 million.

He was, however, convicted on two charges of offering an advantage to public officers.

The sentence will run from the day he was convicted on September 10, 2021

DeGabrielle told the court that Mpinganjira acted with impunity to subvert the course of justice and that in regards to such, the mitigating factors that were presented before the court did not carry weight.

Mpinganjira has taken one year and nine months to know his fate following his arrest by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on January 22 2020 on allegations he attempted to bribe five judges that heard the historic May 21 2019 presidential election nullification petition.

Maneno Chimulala

I am a journalist, educator, and activist with passion for telling stories about social justice, sports and political issues. I graduated from Mzuzu University. I started my career at the Maravi Post online publication in 2012 as an intern while in college. Upon graduating from Mzuzu University I was offered a job as Sports Reporter because of my background as a goalkeeper and rose to the position of sub editor. I also had a short stint with Nyasatimes, Malawi Punch and Malawi Digest. Over the past seven years, I have worked intimately with rural organizations and communities in Malawi on human rights, girl child education and grassroots development projects. With an academic background in education, I also volunteer as male champion for girls’ education under Girls Empowerment Networks (GENET) in Malawi’s South West Education Division (SWED).