Police food rations case hearing today
The High Court in Blantyre will today start hearing a case relating to the freezing of bank accounts for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Pioneer Investments in connection with the K2.7 billion Malawi Police Service (MPS)food rations scam.
High Court judge Jack N’riva is expected to hear arguments and counter-arguments on the application by Mzuzu-based Youth and Society (YAS) through Ritz-Attorneys at Law for commercial banks to provide disclosures of transactions in the deal.
On July 30 this year, the court ordered National Bank of Malawi (NBM) plc to freeze an account for Zameer Karim of Pioneer Investments over the supplier’s alleged link to the K2.7 billion scam.
The order followed a court case in which YAS sued DPP and Pioneer Investments on July 24 2018, asking the court to freeze the accounts for the two institutions, among others.
In the Civil Case No.215 of 2018, DPP secretary general Grezelder Jeffrey and legal affairs director Charles Mhango are first defendants on their own behalf and that of members of the DPP; Karim is second defendant while Innocent Bottoman of MPS is the third defendant.
On the other hand, Standard Bank plc, NBM, director general of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) and former Secretary to the Treasury Dr Ronald Mangani are first, second, third and fourth parties cited, respectively.
The case follows a leaked ACB investigation report which documented that Pioneer Investments made an abortive interest claim of K466 million and deposited K145 million into the DPP bank account at Standard Bank whose sole signatory is President Peter Mutharika.
The court also issued a fresh order for the freezing of the DPP account at Standard Bank after it transpired that the initial order made last week Friday had an error on the account number for the party.
YAS took the DPP and Pioneer to court after the two failed to pay back the money, having demanded such through demand letters on July 17 2018.
