Cashgate report: Govt says K6.1bn, not K13bn stolen

Malawi’s Finance Minister Maxwell Mkwezalamba on Monday defended the omission of names of various individuals and companies involved in the plunder of taxpayers’ money between April and September 2013 in the forensic audit report prepared by a British forensic audit firm Baker Tilly.

Mkwezalamba told journalists in the capital, Lilongwe the release of the report “is not the end of it all” as government will continue pursuing a comprehensive forensic audit dating back to 2005 when its electronic payment system, the Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (Ifmis) was introduced.

He said: “Indeed, there is no mention of names of individuals and companies in the report and this is for good reason of not prejudicing ongoing legal proceedings in our courts.

“Government had initially insisted that this information be released and last week the Auditor General had discussed with the [forensic] auditors to include the names but for the reasons I mentioned, the auditors could include that and that is also the position of government.”

During the news conference designed to officially present the forensic report findings to Malawians through the media, Mkwezalamba, who was flanked by Malawi’s Information and Civic Education Minister Brown Mpinganjira, Attorney General Anthony Kamanga and Chief Secretary to the Government Hawa Ndilowe, among others, also justified the delay in releasing the report, saying such a delay helped improve on evidence.

He dispelled accusations that the delay in releasing the report meant that government was tampering with the actual findings of the report, saying that was not possible since the auditors’ line of reporting was through the British government, hence not possible to meddle with the findings.

Quizzed by The Nation on the discontent feedback which was awash on social media on Monday that the findings of the report are not substantively new to the expectation of most Malawians, Mkwezalamba described such a feedback as an “incorrect assessment”, saying the revealed amount itself is lower than what government had earlier estimated.

During the entire press briefing, the minister, however, kept referencing the total stolen figure in the report as K6.1 billion (about $15.2m) and not K13.6 billion (about $34m), saying the forensic auditors ‘went beyond their mandate to include two other areas.’

On his part, Mpinganjira described the report as one of the results of the fight against fraud and corruption by Malawi President Joyce Banda.

So far, 70 cases are in court following arrests and revelations of the theft which the forensic report has attempted to put in perspective.