Karim cashes contested K145m, transfers funds after court order

High Court last week put aside a freeze order, granting businessman Zameer Karim of Pioneer Investment Limited, the Malawi Police  food rations supplier who deposited K145 million into a governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) account whose sole signatory is President Peter Mutharika, to access his bank accounts who cashed the money held at First Merchant Bank (FMB).

Judge Ken Manda of Lilongwe High Court granted the order on August 23 2018 after Karim’s lawyer Frank Mbeta  had applied for relief  pending a judicial reveiew.

The state anti-money laundering and suspicious financial transactions watchdog, FIA spokesperson Masauko Ebere has been served with the court order belatedly on Monday August 27 after the businessman had already cashed K145 million which was  a pay back by DPP.

Ebere said the Financial Intelligence Authority  are in the process of “setting aside the order and also analysing the trail of the funds.”

Mzuzu-based Youth and Society (YAS) took the matter to court for freeze of  Standard Bank plc and National Bank of Malawi (NBM) plc accounts for the DPP and Pioneer Investment Limited.

The case follows a leaked Anti Corruption Bureau investigative report, which claimed that Pioneer overcharged the police by K466 million on the basis of 20 percent exchange rate losses that were neither incurred nor provided for in the contract.