ACB not probing K92bn Cashgate
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) says it cannot investigate the K92 billion (about $184m) Cashgate because the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament last year recommended that they first clear the 2013 loot before delving into the past.
During a PAC meeting on Monday where ACB deputy director Reyneck Matemba was summoned to answer questions regarding the ongoing investigation into the massive plunder of government finances, Matemba said they have no file on the K92 billion Cashgate that happened between 2009 and 2012 during the Bingu wa Mutharika regime.
However, Matemba was quick to say that compliance with the PAC recommendation did not discredit their efforts as an independent body.
Matemba told the committee: “The [previous] Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts recommended that the external forensic audit as well as our [ACB] investigations into the public finance mismanagement or misappropriation in government should focus on the current Cashgate scam where over K20 billion was stolen since July 2013 [after which it can] then [be] extend to the previous years.
“PAC did not and has never stopped us from investigating the K92 billion audit query. What PAC made was a recommendation and not a direction and, besides, that recommendation was made not only to the ACB, but to the National Audit Office, the Financial Intelligence Unit [FIU] and the Fiscal and Fraud Unit of the Malawi Police Service. However, we at the ACB saw the merit in their recommendation.”
According to Matemba, the K92 billion—exposed by the National Audit Office (NAO) investigative audit—can only be tackled after the current Cashgate trials are concluded, but could not specify when that will be.
“Our understanding regarding the issue of the K92 billion is that it is an audit query and that this matter is being handled by [NAO].
“We always collaborate with the National Audit Office. When NAO is done with their audit exercise and there is need to conduct criminal investigations, we believe the Auditor General will be in a position to refer those matters to either the ACB or the Fiscal and Fraud Unit of the Malawi Police Service for a criminal investigation, as we have done before. Currently, the ACB does not have any file relating to the K92 billion,” he said.
NAO spokesperson Thomas Chafunya confirmed the ACB’s position in an interview on Monday.
He said their move is backed by recommendations made by the then chairperson of PAC, Beatrice Mwangonde.
“What had happened was that members unanimously agreed to first tackle the [April-September 2013] Cashgate, which was deemed as more recent than tackling an issue that happened some years back,” he said.
But this position runs counter to the wishes of donors such as Britain and Germany, who are demanding that investigations should go as far back as 2005 and 2009 respectively—an exercise they have promised to finance.
Major donors—which have suspended budget support—say only a thorough clean-up of the public finance management system could bring back budget support, whose absence has crippled the economy of a country that depends on donors to fund up to 40 percent of its national budget.
