Rise of HTD Limited: Malawi ruling parties best ‘well-wishers’
Motor vehicle dealers HTD Limited continue to rise in their business endeavours in Malawi with the company being reputed as the best “well-wishers” of every ruling party.
HTD Limited is a private local Limited Liability Company incorporated in Malawi in 1993 .
The company has been making political donations to the former president late Bingu wa Mutharika regime and went to be key “well-wishers” of the Joyce Banda administration bankrolling the People’s Party and continues their “generosity” in support of the current Peter Mutharika government. They have recently donated a vehicle to First Lady Gertrude Mutharika’s Beautify Malawi Trust.
They failed to do business with founding president Kamuzu Banda who chased them but we’re given lease of business life during Bakili Muluzi presidency.
They are also new Land Rover franchise dealer for Malawi a reliable brand which is essential for the transport sector especially in the rural areas.
“HTD knows where bread is buttered. During the Joyce Banda reign, they gave her a KIA pickup as a donation and what followed was government buying KIA vehicles for some of its senior officials. They have donated to First Lady Mutharika and expect more government depuartment to buy from HTD. Toyota made a donation of an ambulance to ministry of health, why can’t HTD emulate that example? Corruption at its best,” noted one commenting on Nyasa Times article.
The distributors of Kia motors in Malawi were among the companies under probe by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), with the help of the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), as Treasury paid out a sum of money estimated at K600 million (about $1.5m.)
Meanwhile, law enforcing agency fear them because of their connection to the power that be and they enjoy “untroubled” status.
In an article which was posted on Nyasa Times, Ahmed Dassu, the UK based democracy campaigner and a businessman of some substance said: “The K600 million is just the surface. At the outset let me say that 99 per cent of the Asians in Malawi are law abiding, but that it is less than 10 individuals among them, who are responsible for holding Malawi’s hard fought democracy, hostage to their corruption and bribery.
“The same individuals are to be held accountable for the $150 million or more worth of assets that Bingu wa Mutharika corruptly accumulated.”
He said Asians who continue to receive major government contracts know which hands to grease “in the process banking their ill gotten money or owning properties and businesses in Johannesburg, Dubai, London, even as far as Australia and Canada. And these stolen billions are lost to Malawi’s economy forever to serve to develop other countries.”
Dassu said these business people and the others find “ready hands” to collect their bribes and facilitate their corrupt practices.
“Yes there are too indigenous Malawians who too looted the country’s Treasury. But the Asians have had the lion’s share of the looting. They can give political donations from corruptly acquired money and bring into power anybody they want for now Malawi’s democracy is prisoner to which politicians or political party has the most money to fund its campaign.”
But President Peter Mutharika commended the Abdul Majid Aboobakar family which owns HTD for showing a sense of patriotism when he opened Abdul Majid Motor City at at Ginnery Corner in the commercial capital Blantyre .
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