Lutepo on suicide watch: Malawi chief cashgate suspect

Businessman  and cashgate suspect Oswald Lutepo’s conscience is apparently bearing down on him. He has been placed on suicide watch at Kamuzu Central Hospital where he’s receiving treatment after his arrest on fresh charges of tax evasion.

Police guarding Lutepo said  he was depressed and was on suicide watch after he surrended himself to the police and then fell unconscious.

“He is under close observation,” a guard at the hospital ward where Lutepo is, told a Nyasa Times correspondent who visited.

Lutepo has accepted wrong doing in the plunder of public resources and apologised to the nation through the media, saying his companies were simply used as conduits.

He implicated former president Banda for benefitting part of his stolen money .Banda has since shot down the claims, saying they are “malicious” and calculated to drag her in the mud of cashgate.

Lutepo is regarded as chief suspect in cashgate cases  and charged in a K5.7 billion (about $11.4m) theft and money laundering case alongside former Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Ralph Kasambara, Pika Manondo and private-practice lawyer Wapona Kita, which is pending hearing in Lilongwe.

He is also is answering similar charges on an amount totalling K3.1 billion (about $6.2m)in the High Court’s Zomba registry.

Lutepo is facing another charge of conspiracy to commit murder charges alongside Kasambara, Manondo and Dauka Manondo in relation to the shooting of former Ministry of Finance budget director Paul Mphwiyo.