K54bn plunder in Malawi govt: OPC  implicated in ‘grand theft’ scandal

The 2016/17 National audit report has shown a massive plunder of tax-payers money with the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) as a major player.

According to an analysis of the audit report by Dr Haswell P Bandawe of MAENGA Group,  apart from the Office of the President, the other state agencies that were not audited included Police and tax-collecting body Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA).

Vice-President Saulos Chilima has been speaking against plunder of public money by the government machinery and the report had vindicated his stance on how corruption has reached impunity levels in government.

Chilima’s office was audited, gaining credibility in the way he handled state resources.

According to Bandawe, the  transactions in the report  clearly shows cases of theft as a result of  persistent failure to provide documentation in support of payments, payments without contracts, failure to substantiate foreign travel and  undocumented purchases of fuel among others.

“The Ministry of Defense and the Army embezzled K17 182 508 052.50 or 31.9% of the K53 867 646 370.61 embezzled and was followed by Accountant-General’s Office (K14 626 746 399.25) or 27.2 % of the total stolen.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs was third with a share of 16.21 % (K8 732 621 164.37 while ESCOM accounted for 9.47% of the theft or K5 100 000 000.00 and ADMRC’s share of the loot (7.85% or K4 227 784 575.00),” said Bandawe in his analysis of the audit.

“To get an idea of the enormous amount of money embezzled or stolen consider this: The Indian government has provided a loan of US$10 million to Malawi. That is K7.7 billion (at K767.036/US$). And yet the Malawi government embezzled K53.9 billion in a single financial year! This is seven times  the amount of the Indian Loan for which the government sold the country by accepting the Gandhi statue,” narrated Bandawe.

“This is outrageous,” he said.

Bandawe said if Malawians cannot condemn the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration on this gross ransacking of public funds, then nothing else will ever shock  the citizens.

“This huge amount of money could afford the country decent hospital care, educational facilities and a reduction of taxes,” he added.

“If the Army can embezzle K17 billion (twice the Indian loan) how much more did the Office of the President steal from tax payers?” wondered Bandawe.

He observed that there are truly no financial controls as the country seems to be operating on an auto-pilot and is on stealing rampage.

“Given the huge amounts of money not accounted for, it is beyond belief that no one has been fired. But it’s normal that no one would be fired since those at the top of the institutions are tribesmen of Mutharika. That’s what tribalism does: it is a huge conspiracy to raid national resources by a few,” said Bandawe.

He also observed that the opposition are not talking about the rampage and driving a point home.

Leader of Opposition  and MCP President Lazarus Chakwera was part of a government racket that shared an unauthorized K4 billion in Parliament and his response to the massive plunder of resources has been lukewarm since revelations that he was part of the MPs who shared the K4 billion tax payers bounty.