Pac gets ready for Bingu wealth probe

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament yesterday started a two-day extraordinary meeting to discuss former president Bingu wa Mutharika’s wealth ahead of an investigation to start soon, PAC chairperson Alekeni Menyani has confirmed.

“We received a formal request from the Office of the Speaker to discuss the matter after the issue was referred to the committee following a motion in the House,” said Menyani.

He said, among other issues, the committee is pondering on asking the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to provide an analysis of Bingu’s wealth while also inviting Transparency International experts, and also seeking support of foreign governments when the investigation starts.

Menyani said the committee mainly wants to understand how the former president was able to transfer funds around the world, and the source of that money.

“Locally, we are going to ask the Malawi Economic Justice Network (Mejn) to provide an economic analysis. We are going to work with the National Integrity Platform, Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) and other bodies to understand the economic aspects of the issue,” he added.

According to Menyani, the meeting also discussed progress on the K577 billion (revised to K236 billion) Cashgate.

He said the meeting will make recommendations to State organs on both issues, and also agree on which public institutions and individuals to be summoned on the matters.

On the Cashgate report, Menyani said the committee has observed that the State has taken “unnecessarily too long” to release names of those implicated in the scandal and the committee is now looking at legal means to have the names released.

“We will eventually have the names out. These are people who are holding our country at ransom and we will end this State capture. First, those people are going to be known, and then prosecuted,” he said.

Menyani said the committee will focus on the ‘five families’ alleged to be masterminders of fraud in government.

Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) national coordinator Martin Chiphwanya said in an interview yesterday that it is important that oversight institutions such as the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and the Judiciary work on these cases on the basis of evidence and prosecute those that are believed to have been involved in this looting.

“Caution should be exercised so that we should not end up with a scenario of compensating people for character assassination unnecessarily,” said Chiphwanya.

However, he said PAC needs to take to task those oversight institutions which are dragging their feet on these issues.

“It is a mockery to fairness and good governance to keep people guessing on what steps are being taken to have those suspected to have looted taxpayers’ money brought to book,” he said.

The inquiry into Bingu’s wealth follows a decision by Parliament during its previous sitting to refer the matter to PAC after Mzimba West MP Harry Mkandawire brought documents to the House, claiming they indicated details of the former president’s wealth.

The documents suggested that Mutharika’s vast wealth could have been fraudulently obtained.

PAC indicated, earlier, that when an inquiry into the former president’s wealth starts it would subpoena some companies and individuals.

According to Menyani, apart from Bingu’s wealth and the K236 Cashgate issues, yesterday PAC also looked into the forensic audit report, and the performance audit of the Central Medical Stores Trust (CMST).

Bingu’s estimated K61 billion wealth, as established by YMW Property  Investment Limited after his death in 2012, became the talk of the town as eight years earlier he had declared his wealth to be about K150 million.

According to Menyani, the meeting, is a restart of PAC’s investigation into Bingu’s wealth after a similar initiative—which had planned to report its findings during the sitting of Parliament that ended on Friday, was deemed unprocedural by the House. n