MCP lawyer-MP Kadzipatike hands himself to police over tax warrant days after office raids

Malawi Congress Party (MCP) director of legal affairs George Kadzipatike has voluntarily handed himself in to police at Area 30 in Lilongwe, after learning that officers had obtained a warrant for his arrest over alleged tax issues.

Kadzipatike, a private practice lawyer and MP for Dowa Kasangazi Constituency, said he decided to present himself to law enforcers directly upon hearing of the warrant, rather than wait to be tracked down.

The development comes just days after more than 20 police and Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) officers stormed his law offices in both Lilongwe and Mzuzu last Friday, confiscating files and seizing personal computers belonging to five lawyers in a dramatic double raid.

Speaking before handing himself over, Kadzipatike vehemently denied any wrongdoing, insisting he had a clean tax record spanning almost two decades of legal practice.

‘MRA has never approached me for non-payment of any taxes,’ he said. ‘I have been practising law for 17 years now in Malawi and will continue to so practise until I die.’

He went further, questioning how the tax authority could now be pursuing him despite repeatedly certifying his compliance in the past.

‘Each year, MRA has been giving me Tax Clearance Certificates, showing that I have been tax compliant. Now they want to disown their own Certificates?’ he said. ‘Politics aside, the primary statutory duty for MRA is to collect taxes from taxpayers and not to be used as a political tool for persecution.’

Kadzipatike also voiced concern over the timing of his detention, revealing fears that being held for an extended period could derail his official parliamentary duties.

‘If I am held for too long, I will miss the internal meeting of the Ad-hoc Committee on the Chikangawa plane crash inquiry scheduled for tomorrow and Thursday,’ he said – a reference to his role in the ongoing parliamentary probe into the fatal plane crash.

Neither police nor the MRA have yet issued any public comment regarding the case.

The escalating saga adds fresh fuel to mounting accusations from opposition figures and civil society groups that state institutions are increasingly being weaponised against critics of the government, following a string of similar controversies in recent weeks, including opposition leader Simplex Chithyola Banda’s own parliamentary warning against what he described as “arbitrary arrests on politically motivated cases.”