Joyce Banda claims innocence in Cashgate: Malawi ex-president will return home
Former Malawian president, Joyce Banda, says she is ready to return to the country to clear her name in a corruption scandal known as “Cashgate” that occurred during her tenure.
Malawian police on Monday secured a court order for the arrest of Banda on allegations that new evidence in the scandal suggested that she was complicit.
“I will be coming back because I never did anything wrong and I am innocent,” Banda who is currently based in the United States told Reuters.
Banda, who was Malawi’s president for two years from 2012, left the country when she lost in an election to Peter Mutharika. She has not returned since 2014.
Banda has been living in the United States, serving as a distinguished fellow at Woodrow Wilson Center and the Center for Global Development in Washington DC.
She further touted her anti-corruption credentials during her two-year stint as president.
“I am the only President who got to the bottom of corruption and instituted the first-ever commission of inquiry into corruption,” she added.
While president, Banda ordered an independent audit of the corruption revelations, which was conducted by British firm RSM (formerly Baker Tilly). The findings were released in 2014.
“[RSM] never linked me to any corruption and the rest is what everyone knows, that even some of my cabinet members were arrested. I never shielded anyone who was found to have been part of this,” she said.
A former justice minister and attorney general Ralph Kasambara was convicted over “cashgate”, as the scandal came to be known, and is in jail, along with a number of former high-ranking government officials and business persons.
The corruption scandal led to international donors halting aid to Malawi.
Banda took over from her boss at the time President Bingu wa Mutharika – who died in office. She, however, lost a subsequent election to incumbent Peter Mutharika.
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If she claims that she got to the bottom of corruption practices and thereby digging out the cashgate scandal, then the possibility that she knew its roots is very high and she shud be the bottom itself! She knew herself! And tried to face it from a different angle yet she was the core of the whole scheme!
It’s not a secret that PP used civil servants to buy the 5 buses for your campaign. If the buses were not for your campaign, what were they for? You are simply a thief.
its not true that Ralph Kasambara was convicted over “cashgate”. Ralph Kasambara was convicted and sentenced to 13 years prison term on the count of conspiracy to murder former budget director Paul Mphwiyo and not cashgate.
Just come mum and face the courts. I hope we will see progress as well on the Muluzi case.
a banda inuyo zikuonetselatu kuti munaononga kuno, pakufunika boma likutengeni basi nanga kuchoka mwachilungamo amachoka choncho??,kumangoti mubwela mpakana pano??,kodi inu aboma ndi otsutsa boma omwe palibe njila ina imene mungamukakamizire mzimayi wakubayi kuti abwelele kuno??. yesetsani ndithu munthuyu amangidwe bansi