Twenty months after former Ministry of Finance budget director and alleged Cashgate kingpin Paul Mphwiyo jumped bail, the Malawi Police Service (MPS) is yet to find him.
In an interview yesterday, National Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya said police are still working with other foreign security agencies, including International Police (Interpol), to track him.
Mphwiyo, who along other Cashgate suspects is accused of defrauding government of K2.4 billion in 2013, was reported missing by his wife Thandizo on June 26 2023.
He vanished just as the High Court was on the cusp of delivering its ruling on money laundering and Cashgate related charges the State was pursuing against him.
Kalaya said currently police are hunting for Mphwiyo as a missing person and as someone suspected to have fled the country after absconding bail.
Said Kalaya: “We already engaged our sister police institutions across the world through Interpol. So any information that we will get that he is somewhere will lead to his arrest.
“But we did not declare him a fugitive because it is just a suspicion that he fled his case because what we have now is a document of a missing person presented to us by his wife.”
The Nation’s check on the Interpol website shows that there is no Malawian appearing on the Interpol red notice.
The red notice is issued and published by Interpol at the request of the member country concerned.
It is a request to law enforcement systems worldwide to locate and arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action.
Asked what efforts have been made to extradite Mphwiyo, Ant-Corruption Bureau (ACB) principal public relations officer Egrita Ndala said the graft busting body did its part by forfeiting the suspect’s house in Area 43 in Lilongwe.
She said the remaining task to trace the suspect’s whereabouts and arrest him is the duty and responsibility of police.
She said: “On our side when someone absconds bail, there are guidelines that we follow. So, that is why we confiscated his house in response to his bail abscondment.”
The court last year revoked Mphwiyo’s bail and ordered his re-arrest following his failure to report for bail since June 2023.
After his bail violations, the State—through ACB—filed an application in the High Court to forfeit Mphwiyo’s estimated K700 million house in Area 43, Lilongwe, which the ex- Treasury technocrat had put up as security alongside K10 million in cash as part of the bail agreement. He also surrendered his travel documents.
But Mphwi yo’s wife, Thandizo, asked the High Court to set aside ACB’s order for forfeiture of the house and stay the forfeiture process on the basis that the house was a matrimonial property and she contributed towards its construction.
However, in her ruling dated April 23 2024, High Court Judge Ruth Chinangwa said Mphwiyo’s bail was based on the property in question to ensure his availability for trial, adding that to withdraw the property at the time of enforcement is a mockery to justice.
Chinangwa said the application for stay lacked merit and was dismissed.
On the application to stay forfeiture, the judge said it automatically fell off upon the other unsuccessful bid.
Thandizo Mphwiyo appealed against the High Court ruling, but on December 6 2024, Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, backing the lower court’s decision.
Cashgate involved the misappropriation of government funds by manipulating the Integrated Financial Management Information System to transfer funds from government bank accounts to private companies as payments for goods and services that were never supplied.
The scandal was uncovered in September 2013 when a government accounts clerk was found with hundreds of millions of kwacha in his car.
The climax of the scandal was the attempted assassination of Mphwiyo a week later, which was linked to the cash looting that a forensic audit showed that as much as K24 billion was stolen from public coffers within six months from April 2013 to September 2013.
Later, a much detailed audit showed that Cashgate went as far back as 2009 and that in the five-year period to 2014, at least K236 billion may have been stolen from Treasury.
