Cashgate: Malawi former army chief arrested

• His former deputy Kafuwa also netted
• Charged with abuse of office, money laundering

Malawi’s  Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) yesterday arrested former Malawi Defence Force (MDF) commander general Henry Odillo (retired) and his then deputy Clement Kafuwa for authorising payments for goods and services not delivered.

Odillo was arrested in Lilongwe while Kafuwa was picked up in Blantyre, according to the ACB.

ACB senior public relations officer Egrita Ndala, in a statement made available to The Nation last evening, said the payments were made to Thuso Investments  by MDF.

Reads the statement in part: “The bureau has established that the Malawi Army [as MDF is widely known] paid K1 921 028 000 to Thuso Investments for the supply of blank ammunition which was never delivered.”

According to the statement, the two will face three charges as follows:

• Abuse of public office contrary to Section 25 (b)(1) of the Corrupt Practices Act;
• Negligence by public officer in preserving money or any other property contrary to Section 284(1) of the Penal Code; and,
• Money laundering contrary to Section 35(1)(d) of the Money Laundering, Proceeds of Serious Crimes and Terrorist Financing Act.

In the statement, ACB said the duo would appear in court for plea and to have their statements recorded.

The arrests of Odillo and Kafuwa follow the arrest in January this year of former MDF lieutenant colonel Nelson Kauwa whose company, Thuso Investments Group, was linked to alleged dubious contracts at MDF.

In an interview after Kauwa’s arrest, ACB deputy director general Reyneck Matemba said Thuso had valid contracts with MDF prior to 2013, but the graft-busting agency found that there was no evidence of a K900 million contract to supply blank bullets.

The September 2014 forensic audit report by British firm Baker Tilly found that close to K18 billion of the K24 billion plundered between April and September 2013 was channelled through MDF.

Matemba said investigations into MDF’s link to Cashgate, the plunder of public resources at Capital Hill, only started in July 2014 as previously its investigators were denied access to Kamuzu Barracks in Lilongwe on the pretext that a public audit could not be done at the institution due to security reasons.

In July 2014, ACB questioned some MDF officials over suspected fraudulent payments suspected to be part of Capital Hill Cashgate.

In February 2014, Weekend Nation revealed several transactions at MDF that attracted the ACB after, among others, over K3 billion was paid out by the military in a single day through transactions authorised by some senior military officers.

Odillo and Kafuwa were apparently signatories of several cheques, including K3 billion to International Procurement Services (IPS) owned by businessperson Osward Lutepo—who is also answering money laundering charges—and K1.5 billion to Thuso co-owned by Kauwa and Alexander Banda, according to information sourced from ACB.