Yusuf Investments Limited and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) are engaged in a fresh legal battle over fresh bids to freeze Amaryllis Hotel bank accounts pending a court appeal.
The two parties faced off in the High Court of Malawi in Lilongwe on Monday this week following an ACB application on the same before Judge Redson Kapindu.
During the court session, ACB director of legal and prosecutions Chrispin Khunga submitted that allowing unrestricted access to the accounts of Amaryllis Hotel, whose K128 billion sale to Public Service Pension Trust Fund is in dispute, would expose billions of kwacha under investigation to possible dissipation and potentially render the appeal meaningless, according to court documents.
Kapindu. | Nation
A sworn statement by ACB senior investigations officer Shadreck Mpaso backed the new restriction order, stating that soon after the magistrate’s court declined to extend the restriction notice, the company allegedly attempted to withdraw funds.
But in its application to vacate or vary the renewed order, Yusuf Investments argued through lawyer Gabriel Kambale that Section 23 of the Corrupt Practices Act only permits restriction notices to be renewed in successive three-month periods, not until the hearing of the appeal.
In a sworn statement in support of the application, Yusuf Investments and Amaryllis Hotel chairperson Shiraz Mohamed Yusuf said he was surprised with the assertions of the alleged attempt to withdraw funds from the bank accounts in question.
“There was no new banking activity capable of giving rise to a fresh suspicious transaction report. The funds remained exactly where they had been throughout the preservation period,” he said.
But Khunga dismissed the company’s argument that the hotel itself is sufficient security, saying the investigation concerns specific liquid funds which can easily be transferred beyond the reach of investigators, unlike immovable property.
Kapindu, who on June 30 2026 granted ACB a fresh temporary restriction order after Lilongwe senior resident magistrate Shukran Kumbani dismissed the bureau’s application to extend the freeze, has since reserved his ruling.
Documents filed in court show that investigators traced K90.125 billion paid to Amaryllis Hotel between January 12 and 22 2026, as proceeds from the hotel’s sale to the fund.
The bureau alleges that K20.15 billion was subsequently transferred from Amaryllis Hotel into Yusuf Investments’ National Bank of Malawi account through three separate transactions before over K1.089 billion was withdrawn through a series of cheques.
