Kamlepo vows to unmask corrupt ministers: CSOs plan demo to demand action in Malawi cashgate report

Public Accounts Committee of parliament (PAC) vice chairman Kamlepo Kalua has vowed that he will  push to reveal the list of corrupt ministers  in the K570 billion forensic audit report that Auditor General Stevenson Kamphasa has presented to the committee to ensure justice prevail, while activist are planning streets protests to demand action.

Price water-house Coopers, who were contracted to work on methodologies on the reconstruction of the cashbook in the wake of audit query for the K92 billion (US$204.4 million) mismanaged under the watch of the first Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration led by former president the late Bingu wa Mutharika, has released a data analysis report on their work.

In the 52-paged report to the National Audit Office of Malawi, PwC has called for further investigations of ministries and departments covering the period between 2005 and 2012.

Kalua has since described the analysis report as not genuine and demanded the original copy from authorities where perpetrators should be known to the public.

The Rumphi East MP for People’s Party noted that some big names were missing in the report and has since vowed to take the matter further by revealing all suspects involved to ensure justice prevail.

“There are so many ways in which we can expose those involved to have plundered government resources one of which is to use relevant laws to force the international company that came up with this report.

“One way is to use the courts through our committee to subpoena them to bring to us the original report so that the truth be known, so we will be looking at all avenues, all channels available for us because we want the people of Malawi to know the truth.

“We know that most of these cabinet ministers are involved in the looting and I mean they are involved in a big way some of them even at state house, so Malawians will know the truth about this and we will not hide anything about this issue, “warned Kalua.

Identifying what they called “red flags”, PwC exposes elements of fraud, especially where transactions were created, paid and deleted consistently.

PwC states that the “anomalies should be further investigated to identify the extent of the suspected irregular transactions.”

German Ambassador Peter Woeste told Capital FM radio that the PwC report pointed out that general public finance management does not work in Malawi.

Malawi’s Auditor General Steven Kampala said the released data analysis report is a first step towards a full forensic audit which would take approximately 10 months.

Kamphasa said the data analysis had identified discrepancies between payments made from government bank accounts and cashbook records held in the Integrated Financial Management Information System (Ifmis).

“From analysis alone it is not possible to establish exact amounts or causes of the discrepancies nor how many of these funds were misappropriated,” the Auditor General said.

PwC cashbook reconstruction report subtly picked on the Reserve Bank of Malawi for failure to provide enough documents for verification.

“Upon completion of the aforementioned exercise, we identified that bank statements for May 2012 were missing and that the statements for December 2013 only contained transactions for 31 December 2013. These aforementioned missing bank statements were requested and the Reserve Bank provided us with additional data,” reads the report.

Even the Baker Tilly forensic audit report also had observed: “We were initially provided with bank statements by the RBM in electronic format whose extraction was not independently supervised by the audit team. In addition we requested extraction of the same data under supervision.”

But Reserve Bank spokesperson Mbane Ngwira said most of the documents said not to be supplied are just human error omissions not necessarily that the central bank intends to hide information.

Meanwhile, human rights campaigner Billy Mayaya has revealed plans by some civil society organisations to hold street protests to demand action from government on the missing billions.

“The current plunder of public resources is impeding development. Malawi’s socio-political status is deteriorating. While neighbouring countries continue to progress we remain stagnant,” lamented Mayaya.

“Politicians are above the law and continue to deceive citizens with empty rhetoric,” he stated.

According to Mayaya, the planned demonstrations are slated for the 7th of July 2015 and will culminate with the delivery of petitions to all State Houses in Blantyre Lilongwe and Mzuzu.

“ In Lilongwe it will be delivered to the Head of State outlining public demands for action against corruption as well as demands for a forensic audit to be expedited as we feel that the 10 month time frame is simply a rouse to divert public attention on this very grave matter, “said Mayaya.

He said details of the nationwide demonstrations will be publicised soon.

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