ACB dates MP on k200m bribe claim
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) plans to summon Dowa West legislator Alexander Kusamba Dzonzi to get more information on his claim that he was offered a K200 million bribe to abandon tabling of Financial Services (Amendment) Bill in Parliament.
In an interview yesterday, ACB director general Reyneck Matemba said the graft-busting body had taken note of the legislator’s allegation as published in Malawi News on Saturday.
He said: “We have taken note of the allegation made by the honourable Kusamba Dzonzi. Due to the seriousness of the allegation, we will try to get in touch with him to get more information on what this is all about.
“We will do that because we realise this issue has attracted public interest. We will get to the bottom of this issue.”
Kusamba Dzonzi claimed that he was offered a K200 million bounty by an unnamed local commercial bank to drop the Financial Services (Amendment) Bill, also known as Interest Capping Bill, which proposes a new Section 3(a) in the Act setting a maximum amount as interest that can be recovered from a borrowed amount.
The legislator’s allegation has stirred debate with several quarters wondering why he did not report the incident to the ACB.
In Section 10(1)(b), the Corrupt Practices Act (CPA) lists as a function of the ACB receiving complaints, reports or other information of any alleged or suspected corrupt practice or offence under the Act.
Matemba said while it is not a criminal offence not to report incidences of corruption, the National Anti-Corruption Strategy and the CPA encourage people to report to enable the ACB to investigate further.
The so-called Interest Capping Bill was a private member’s action that began some months ago with a Parliament secretariat-driven consultative process.
After attempts by the government side to thwart its tabling, the Bill was eventually tabled on Thursday and referred to a joint parliamentary committee for further scrutiny.
Kusamba Dzonzi could not be reached for comment yesterday on ACB’s plan to summon him, but he is on record as having told our sister newspaper Nation on Sunday that government was misleading the nation in stating that the proposed amendment was inconsistent with the Constitution.
The Bill has attracted a lot of public interest as, among others, it seeks to put limits on how much interest rates banks, microfinance institutions, savings and credit cooperatives and other lenders can put on loans.
Parliament has since referred the Bill to a joint committee for further scrutiny and consultation.
Corporate governance analyst Anthony Mukumbwa told The Nation last week that the Bill was worth supporting because financial institutions were benefiting from high interest rates that have crowded out the private sector and contributed to high commodity prices. n
