Friday, March 29, 2024

Malawi ministers to testify against cabinet colleague in maize graft trial

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President Edgar Lungu Meets Dr George Chaponda A Special Envoy of President of Malawi Prof Arthur Peter Mutharika who is Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development at State House in Lusaka - Picture By Eddie Mwanaleza/Statehouse 21-10-2016.
FILE: President Edgar Lungu Meets Dr George Chaponda A Special Envoy of President of Malawi Prof Arthur Peter Mutharika who is Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development at State House in Lusaka – Picture By Eddie Mwanaleza/Statehouse 21-10-2016.

Three Malawian ministers will testify in court against a former cabinet colleague charged with abuse of office over a maize procurement contract, court documents showed.

President Peter Mutharika launched an investigation in January into the government order for 100,000 tonnes of Zambian white maize, after an opposition leader there said he had seen documents showing Malawi had been charged $345 per ton instead of the $215 the consignment was worth.

Then agriculture minister George Chaponda was arrested in July, sacked and charged with abuse of office and possession of foreign currency without lawful justification.

He pleaded not guilty to both charges and was released on bail pending trial, for which no date has yet been set.

Malawi was importing maize to ease food shortages triggered by a severe drought that swept the region in 2016.

According to court documents seen by Reuters, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe, Information Nicoluas Dausi and Trade and Industry Minister Henry Mussa will be called to give evidence against Chaponda.

The three ministers, who declined to comment, are expected to testify late this month, local newspapers said.

Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau also declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Here, moribund Edward Jonathan getting a cut in every contract. The sucker and other parasites cant even move coz there are full of blood they have sucking from carcass called Zambia. Shame

  2. How poverty stricken Zambians would kill to defend corrupt leaders, thinking they will be made rich by their corrupt masters, not knowing that they are destroying the country together with them it.

  3. If what we are reading is true then I just wonder why on the Zambian side it’s so quiet and it’s “business as usual”. I think George Chaponda if convicted, should be made to disclose who he connived with on the Zambian side because corruption is a two-way transaction.

  4. Over their dead bodies will the masquerades do anything about corruption, but let them be warned that as soon as they leave office, they will regret ever having imposed themselves on the people of this country, they will curse the day they were born, they will curse even the person who announced their births, they will eat their faeces and drink their urine.

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