Parties to the K1.1 trillion defunct Finance Bank Malawi compensation claim yesterday resumed tussling during assessment proceeding in court with the State challenging an opportunity-cost valued at $30.4 million (about K53.2 billion).
Attorney General Frank Mbeta and Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) lawyers too turns to cross-examine the ‘dead’ bank’s witnesses before High Court of Malawi and Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal Assistant Registrar Ibrahim Hussein.
Mbeta asked the defunct bank’s witness Nkhuzo Kuwani, a financial adviser for the Mahtani Group of Companies of Zambia which owned the financial institution, questioning him why he included opportunity cost losses that the Supreme Court did not order.
In response, the witness insisted that opportunity costs are the loss of profits because the bank could have made profits from “treasury services”.
“Treasury services mean what?” queried Mbeta.
To which Kuwani responded: “In banking operations you always have cash moving. You collect debt, before you lend it out again you have cash that is idle so that you earn money on it.”
In his calculations, Kuwani said the defunct bank also needs $69 million (about K120.8 billion) which it could have earned as profits through lending.
Mbeta also asked the witness why he included the period between January 1 and May 17 2005 in his calculations when the licence was not yet revoked.
Kuwani said the interference from RBM in the bank’s operations affected business during the stated period.
The witness further said that, in his assumption, since the court awarded damages, it meant there had been interference. But Mbeta asked the court to note that working on assumptions could result in wrong calculations.
During re-examination, one of the FBM lawyers, Modecai Msisha, asked him to explain why he chose to use National Bank of Malawi as a suitable comparator to project how much FBM could have made.
Kuwani said, among others, it was because the two banks used the same auditing firm and operated within the same period.
The State then paraded its first witness, RBM chief examiner Titus Chima, who said he was in the supervisory team of the bank. He was briefly cross-examined by Wapona Kita before the court adjourned at around 4pm.
Among others, Kita sought to establish if Chima brought evidence challenging the initial consolidated claim of $134 million (about K234.6 billion) as the total for loss of business.
The assessment follows the February 3 2026 Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal judgement, which declared that the suspension of the bank’s foreign currency operations and the revocation of its banking licence in 2005 were unconstitutional.
The bank was established in 1995.
