ACB officials receive death threats over Malawi cashgate crackdown

Malawi’s graft-busting body deputy director and prosecutor Reyneck Matemba has said he is a victim of death threats related to the cashgate crackdown, saying other two officials are also living dangerously.

The other two officials receiving death threats are Kondwani Zulu and Vilera Liwonde who are Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) investigators.

“Yes I have been receiving menacing phone calls,” Matemba told Nyasa Times.

He said anonymous callers have told him to “take care of himself”.

Matemba said the death threats are related to the arrests the bureau has been making over cashgate scandal.

He said Zulu and Liwonde have also received calls telling them to stop hunting officials linked to alleged cases of corruption.

Matemba said that while he does not know where the threats have come from, he can state that there are some very powerful people who are linked to cashgate corruption scandal.

It is believed that their work on cashgate could be the cause of the threats.

Cashgate is the biggest financial scandal in Malawi’s history. It has affected the country’s relations with donors and caused outrage among Malawians.

Lilongwe Magistrate court last week sentenced a former junior civil servant accounts assistant Victor Sithole to nine years in jail with hard labour as his arrest in August 2013 kick-started what became known as the “cashgate” affair.

It became public knowledge a month later following the shooting of the finance ministry’s then budget director Paul Mphwiyo in September 2013.

The first person to be convicted in relation to the high-profile case was former Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Tressa Namathanga Senzani, who was sentenced to three years in jail last month.

Meanwhile, human rights activists have condemned acts of intimidation against ACB official and calls on the authorities to investigate their origin to punish those found responsible.