Just for the record: K236bn plunder
While campaigning for a third term in 2003, former president Bakili Muluzi said “Amalawi sachedwa kuyiwala (Malawians forget quickly).” He was referring to atrocities the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) committed during its 31 years in power under the reign of former president the late Kamuzu Banda. Ironically Muluzi was once MCP’s secretary general. In that position, he was the party’s second most powerful person after Kamuzu. When Muluzi made that statement, his expectation was that Malawians had also forgotten about all that.
The Third-Term bid as we all know failed and Muluzi eventually settled for Bingu wa Mutharika, a Johnny-come-lately in the United Democratic Front’s (UDF) politics, to succeed him at Plot No. One. Muluzi appointed Bingu at the expense of more senior party cadres in the UDF’s pecking order such as Aleke Kadonaphani Banda and Harry Thompson, to mention but a few.
But Muluzi was right after all. I cannot agree more that Malawians forget quickly. The infamous Cashgate was first noted in 2005 but exposed 13 years later, in 2013. This is according to a forensic audit of the Government of Malawi by auditors, RSM Risk Assurance Services LLP of the United Kingdom (UK). Between 2009 and 2013 there was unbridled theft of public funds at Capital Hill it could no longer be concealed. So they started keeping it anywhere, including in car boots. But as they say, some big things start with small people. Someone’s help hand spotted one such bounty in the boot of his master’s car and eureka he could not keep his mouth shut. The news spread like wildfire. Thereafter one arrest led to another. As they say, the rest is history.
When the theft was exposed in September 2013, the Joyce Banda administration invited a UK-based forensic audit firm—Baker Tilly—to conduct an audit of the malfeasance. The firm picked six months—from April to September 2013—of the plunder. It uncovered that during these six months alone, civil servants and businesspersons had looted K24 billion from the public purse.
If K24 billion was plundered between April and September 2013, what was the damage from 2009 to 2014? This is the question that another forensic audit firm—RSM Risk Assurance Services LLP also of the UK—sought to answer. The audit was funded by the German government.
Its findings? The public purse had been gobbled a dizzying K236 billion. Yes, 10 times more than the money stolen during the six months in 2013 that Baker Tilly examined. The RSM report implicated seven Cabinet ministers under the previous administration.
Glitch!
The RSM forensic audit report, released in 2016 under the DPP administration, was supposed to be tabled in Parliament. But it went nowhere. Understandably so.
When loud-mouthed Rumphi East legislator Kamlepo Kaluwa became vocal about the seven ministers implicated in the report, the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) swooped on him, obviously to silence and punish him for trying to expose the dirt. After that incident, Kamlepo has never talked about the loot again. In 2019, towards the tripartite elections, Peter Mutharika even appointed Kamlepo into his Cabinet.
And two-and-a-half years after the Tonse Alliance took over the reins of power, it has done nothing on the matter, a development that must have come as a huge relief for the seven former Cabinet ministers implicated in the K236 billion RSM forensic audit report. We can safely conclude the matter is now water under the bridge. And as a nation we have forgotten about it and incinerated it. A dizzying K236 billion gone! Muluzi was dead right that Malawians forget quickly.
Tonse has had its own teething problems on busting graft. It started well in 2020 arresting several individuals in what has come to be known as the K5 billion Cement-gate case. Then boom! On the scene came Zuneth Sattar. With him everything against graft just collapsed like the Berlin War did on November 9 1989. The perception now is that the Tonse Alliance administration came with guns blazing not to fight corruption but to bring down the very instruments and weaponry it had assembled to bust graft. At best we can say this regime has been pulling wool over our eyes on its efforts to fight corruption.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau has been falling all over on the Cement-gate case. To date, the country’s lead graft-busting body has not been able to interview former president Peter Mutharika whose TPIN some individuals abused to import cement and evade tax. If Tonse can’t make progress on these straightforward cases, no one can expect it to have the time and stamina to follow the K236 billion looted from the public pulse between 2009 and 2014.
Sadly, we have also forgotten the geneses of how donors closed the tap for direct budget support to Malawi in 2013. Baker Tilly project was a good gesture. Government also started well prosecuting the 2013 Cashgate suspects although many of them are still walking freely. Government’s biggest undoing was to sweep the K236 billion RSM report under the carpet.
