According to reporting by Zodiak Malawi Online, Malawi’s chief prosecutor says she will be reviewing cash-gate cases in which some suspects and convicts have implicated former president Joyce Banda as being party to the looting of public resources that saw the country lose billions of kwacha in taxpayers’ money.
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Mary Kachale said this when she responded to a question on what she made of the trend in the courts where four people have so far implicated Dr. Banda and demanded that she come to court as a witness.
Private practice lawyer Justin Dzonzi has told Zodiak that the office of the DPP has a legal mandate to follow the claims being made by the suspects to their sensible legal conclusion.
One year since the office of DPP and the Anti-Corruption Bureau began taking cash-gate and cash-gate related cases to court, the name of former President Joyce Banda has been mentioned a record four times in the courts by suspects some of whom have now been convicted.
The latest was on Wednesday when former Assistant Tourism Director Leonard Kalonga pleaded guilty to three charges before Judge Fiona Mwale in the Lilongwe High court.
He alleged the network that was involved in defrauding taxpayers of billions actually sent the money to the former President.
Earlier, former minister of Justice Raphael Kasambara told the court when he was first arrested for alleged conspiracy to murder former Director of Budget Paul Mphwiyo that to prove his innocence, he would like President Joyce Banda who was still in office then to show up in court as his witness, among other people.
And in the first public confession of a cash-gate suspect in the country, Oswald Lutepo, who is now awaiting sentencing after conviction, also implicated the former President as a beneficiary of cash-gate loot.
Another suspect Pika Manondo also told the High Court in Lilongwe recently that he desires that Dr Banda appears in court to set the record straight on how certain things may or may not have happened at and around the time cash-gate and cash-gate related issues occurred.
“Like I do with all other cases since I was appointed, I will review all the (Cash-gate) evidence that have been in the courts over the past year.
“And depending on the findings of the review process, I will decide on the way forward. My office will do that without fear or favor. All prosecution is based on availability of evidence in the absence of which there cannot be a case against anyone,” she said.
However, lawyer Dzonzi says given the public interest in the matter and the plunder of public resources that occurred in this country, the DPP has a legal mandate to pursue the claims being made in the courts by suspects in cash-gate or cash-gate related cases.
“The laws of Malawi mandate the office of the Director of Public Prosecution to review evidence and cause the Anti-Corruption Bureau and other investigating bodies to investigate suspicions of plunder of the kind of Cash-gate.
“The Public Procurement Act empowers that office to ensure that public funds are traced to the last tambala if there are suspicions and evidence that the funds may have been used for purposes other than what they were officially intended,” he said.
Dr. Banda is currently in South Africa where she has now been for over a year following her defeat in the May 2014 elections.
A few weeks ago, she issued a media statement in which she said she had problems returning home because she feared persecution by the current administration led by President Peter Mutharika.
The concerns were also relayed to local diplomats. Government has repeatedly refuted this and insists it would not interfere with the justice system.
Up to K30bn is thought to have been stolen in the cashgate scandal that occurred between 2012 and 2013 in which politicians connived with businesspersons and civil servants to steal from state coffers.
