ACB nicks Weekend Times reporter for corruption probe
Malawi’s Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) and police officers on Tuesday morning arrested a journalist who works for a newspaper that publishes scandals involving public figures, Kandani Ngwira, alleged extortion of money from a senior official of Story Workshop.
Ngwira works for the Weekly Times, a newspaper that the Malawian government tried to ban in November of last year.
He was arrested in the office of his boss Brian Ligomeka by an ACB officer who was in company of a police officer.
Colleagues say Ngwira was arrested after a sting operation from ACB and police and a worker at Story Workshop in Blantyre where Ngwira was investigating a sex scandal for his tabloid Weekend Times.
ACB confirmed the arrest of the journalists “in connection with allegations of extortion.”
And a senior journalists from Blantyre Newspapers Limited -publishers of Weekend Times – confirmed as well that a “colleague has been arrested this morning.”
Ngwira was also arrested in January this year for allegedly sending a ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator “threatening messages”.
He was however freed after police investigations traced the messages to a mobile phone belonging to one Harold Kaumphawi.
The messages were alerting the DPP MP, Agnes Penemulungu, that her husband -Lilongwe businessman Lucky Penemulungu – had romantic affairs with young girls and, unless the legislator pays an amount of money, the Penemulungus would be scandalised in the weekly scandal sheet, The Weekend Times.
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