Mphwiyo attempted to jump bail, surety tells Malawi court

Crispin Ernest Banda, who was the surety for former Ministry of Finance budget director Paul Mphwiyo, claimed in the High Court on Wednsday that Mphwiyo planned to jump bail.

Banda asked High Court judge Esmie Chombo to be withdrawn as a surety for Mphwiyo’s bail in the theft and money laundering charges amounting to K2.1 billion.

In his application prepared by private practice lawyer Ralph Kasambara, who is one of the suspects in the case of attempting to murder Mphwiyo, Banda told the judge in her chamber that he had information that Mphwiyo was planning to jump bail.

He asked the court to order a refund of his K2 million bail bond which the court granted.

Mphwiyo on Monday applied to the bureau to be allowed to travel to South Africa for medical aid. In December last year, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) allowed Mphwiyo to travel to South Africa for medical treatment.

Two bullets hit Mphwiyo in the mandible and another went through his shoulder to his chest. One bullet was removed in a South African hospital but two others – lodged in his spinal column – will remain inside the 38-year-old for the rest of his life.

ACB deputy director general Reyneck Matemba said Mphwiyo has since found the new surety and court examined him to be satisfactory.

Mphwiyo, whose shooting on 13 September 2013 led to the unravelling of the systematic looting of millions of government money dubbed ‘cashgate’,

The gun-shot survivor implicated Kasambara, a former minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs at the time of the incident, as one of the people that wanted to kill him.