Football needs cash-gate probe
In the aftermath of the Capital Hill cash-gate, I am disturbed by the selective and predictable uproar this Lilongwe looting and plunder has generated for I know such evils are common in most spheres of Malawi life, more so in football.
The Lilongwe saga simply confirms that this nation’s interest starts and ends on government and politics, the rest do not matter. Elsewhere, economies thrive on spin-offs of sports and entertainment industries.
If you ask me, domestic football is a safe haven for sophisticated gate-ticketing fraud and player-transfer money laundering involving stakeholders I would not be surprised if any of us, sports journalists, sick and tired after we failed to help bust this syndicate, resort to joining the Mafia. If you cannot beat them, join them.
There is documented evidence that the stadium gate fraud involves fans, cashiers, supervisors, the police, Sulom, government and FAM officials. Every time a suspect is caught redhanded with strands of kwacha, they are set free mysteriously.
Will the civil society organisations only make noise on matters involving Capital Hill? If you ask me, fraud is fraud and looting is looting. Where such evils take place, should not be important than the actual vice.
What else do the authorities need for them to act when even the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) is aware of the stadium pilferage it has even championed workshops against the same?
What more evidence do the authorities need if FAM president Walter Nyamilandu, during a football workshop which the ACB facilitated at the Ryalls Hotel a few years ago, revealed that he once caught a police officer with loads of cash at the stadium?
When Sulom has produced several reports detailing how gate fraud is perpetrated, why is there no action?
If you ask me the only differences between the Lilongwe looting and stadium evil are that the former is deeply entrenched at the Capital Hill while the latter is so institutionalised at Kamuzu Stadium. But at stake is taxpayers money.
The former involves civil servants and the latter is free-for-all otherwise, government owns both facilities that habour fraudsters, looters and thieves. What a shame that a country that pretends to be God-fearing has instantly transformed into that of plunderers.
