National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) chief executive officer Engineer Emmanuel Matapa says he cannot step aside following revelations that the entity paid $403 605 (about K700 million) based on “fraudulent correspondence”.
His reaction in an interview with The Nation yesterday followed calls by some civil society organisations (CSOs) for the immediate suspension or administrative step-aside of all officials directly involved in the payment, verification and approval processes, pending a full investigation.
The calls came in the wake of Nocma’s disclosure on Monday that it launched an investigation into a “fraudulent correspondence” worth $403 605 (about K700 million) intended for one of its service providers, Mozhandling Limited.
But last evening, Matapa wondered why he should step aside when he only assumed work on May 1 2026, days after the transaction had already taken place.
“I don’t know where people are taking it that I have been suspended or fired. I am actually still here at Nocma. Resigning? All those transactions happened before I came here. I started work on May 1, so how do I become responsible for things that happened before me? Let people be the judge on this,” he said.
On Monday, Nocma said the payment, made on April 29 2026 to a Bank of America account, related to the handling of petroleum products through the Indian Ocean port of Nacala in Mozambique for the period August 13 2025 to January 2026.
But yesterday, National Advocacy chairperson Benedicto Kondowe said in a statement that in a country starved of foreign exchange, such a loss is economically indefensible, institutionally unacceptable and morally unconscionable.
Nocma said following the government’s decision in November 2024 to transition from the Open Tender System to Government-to-Government (G2G) fuel procurement, Nocma was designated to play a central role in the importation of petroleum products.
It argued that the arrangement introduced new contractual, financial, shipping and clearing processes involving multiple international suppliers and service providers before these procedures were fully developed and institutionalised.
But Kondowe said Nocma’s admission that new contractual, financial, shipping and clearing processes under the G2G arrangement operated before the relevant procedures had been fully developed and institutionalised is equally damning.
In a separate statement, the Human Rights Defenders Coalition said the incident dents the credibility of the administration and requires a response commensurate with the seriousness of the loss.
In 2023, Malawi Government said it had recovered $543 750 (about K563 million) that was frozen in a Germany bank as payment for the botched K750 million Affordable Inputs Programme deal.
