…..MUTHARIKA’S CABINET MINISTERS AND THE SHADOWS OF A BORDERLESS EMPIRE
By Falles Kamanga
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-President Peter Mutharika to double-check who actually holds the keys to the state house back doors.
The latest explosive exposé by the Platform for Investigative Journalism (PIJ) doesn’t just suggest a bit of official sloppiness. It paints a picture of a national border and security system that was practically leased out to the highest bidder.
At the center of this mess sits Bahar Sumsudin Sarker, a Bangladeshi national running a massive human smuggling, document forgery, and kidnapping ring out of Lilongwe’s Area 49.
But Mr. Sarker was no helpless fugitive hiding in the dark. He was a man moving comfortably through the high halls of power, operating right under the shadow of the current Mutharika administration.
When you strip away the official press releases and legal hand-waving, the names left standing in this scandal belong to the very people supposed to protect the country.
Take Minister of Lands Chimwemwe Chipungu, the former Defense Minister. While regular Malawians are struggling to get by, leaked private messages show Sarker bragging that Chipungu personally sorted out his VIP seating at the presidential inauguration.
The political friendship didn’t stop with handshakes either. Sarker went straight into business with the minister’s brother, Godfrey Chipungu, setting up a joint venture called IK Investments. Their main goal? Bidding on juicy military supply deals to feed soldiers at Kamuzu Barracks under procurement reference MDF/KB/RATS/26, while also trying to grab a piece of the state-controlled Salima Sugar Company.
Then you have Homeland Security Minister Mr. Mukhito, whose name popped up in Sarker’s ledger records alongside bank deposit slips, actual account numbers, and mobile money transfer receipts.
Leaked documents show these illicit payments were directed not only to accounts under the minister’s name, but also directly to an individual identified as Martha Mukhito. Both Mukhito and Police Inspector General Richard Luhanga claim the minister’s name was simply dropped by a clever fraudster looking to look big, adding that Mukhito personally gave the green light for police to move in.
But whether through real political cover or plain institutional blindness, the ministry tasked with keeping us safe became the ultimate playground for Sarker’s bank account.
The digital evidence pulled from Sarker’s phone shows an organized monthly payroll set up to keep airport workers, immigration staff, and intelligence agents happy.
In one instance, a single mobile cash transfer of 1.26 million kwacha was sent to a senior immigration officer at Kamuzu International Airport.
In an encrypted text from August 2025, Sarker casually noted: “This one DG also now I am paying.”
He was watching cabinet reshuffles like a nervous investor, terrified that a new face at the border post might shut down his human assembly line.
When rival smuggling gangs tried to jump in on his airport business, Sarker didn’t just call the police—he used state security agencies kidnapping of Bangladeshi national Sharif Islam for a 400,000 Rand ransom.
When law enforcement finally moved in during an intelligence-led operation, it revealed just how deep the syndicate had burrowed into the National Intelligence Service (NIS). Arrested alongside Sarker were two female NIS officers, Angella Msiska (31) and Thocco Jonas (26), along with an associate named Lawrence Kanauke (33).
The intelligence connection went far beyond casual favors: when a syndicate associate died under mysterious circumstances in South Africa, Sarker’s son frantically reached out to Officer Msiska, who reassured him that 750,000 kwacha had already been dispatched to cover funeral costs and that pre-arranged legal protections were firmly in place.
Yet when the net tightened, the political protective gear was deployed almost immediately.
Sarker’s co-accused—violent gang leader Rizwan Farook Akbar—was quickly granted bail after High Court lawyer Stanley Chirwa stepped in.
Chirwa, a politically connected attorney, happens to double as the Board Chairperson for the state-owned Blantyre Water Board.
Shortly after getting bail, Farook managed to magically escape police custody at Phalula while in a police vehicle and went on the run. While he was hiding out, his brother, Salahuddin Akbar, walked right into the office of Deputy Inspector General Dr. Noel Kayira carrying 3 million kwacha in hard cash, hoping to buy protection, he was arrested on the spot.
The saddest part of this whole story is what happened to the honest officers who actually did their jobs.
When Evance Kameta, an airport station manager for the NIS, caught three major traffickers, his reward was an instant transfer to a remote post in Kasungu. When Emmanuel James Kambale, Director of Counter Terrorism, co-led the joint operation with American agents to arrest Sarker—and wrote a memo directly to President Mutharika naming cabinet ministers involved with trafficking rings—he was immediately stripped of his command and dumped into an administrative desk at the Office of the President. CID Director Isaac Norman suffered the exact same fate: demoted and sent off to a regional outpost.
Now, Western embassies are pulling back visa processing across sub-Saharan Africa, citing compromised passport security and wide-open vulnerabilities at our airport.
But back in Lilongwe, the key state witness has suddenly turned hostile, the lead investigators are sitting on the sidelines, and the big fish are still buttoning up their suits for cabinet meetings.
Mr. Sarker might be sitting in a cell right now at Maula prison, but the political machinery that fed him is still humming along smoothly.
Take it or leave it, as long as President Mutharika lets his cabinet shelter people who trade away the nation’s integrity, Malawi’s borders will stay wide open to anyone with a heavy wallet and a minister’s phone number.
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