Former Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) prosecutor, David Bandawe, has accused the Bureau\u2019s Director General, Lucas Kondowe, of \u2018influencing\u2019 the second dismissal of a case involving two Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) former top bosses.<\/p>\n
In the case, former MHC General Manager, Golden Matiya, and his Deputy Responsible for Technical Services, Floyd Mondiwa, were answering charges of abuse of public office and non-disclosure of interest by public officers.<\/p>\n
Bandawe made the accusation during a court hearing on February 2, 2016 when he told Chief Resident Magistrate, Thomson Ligowe, in Blantyre that since Kondowe was appointed, he ordered that all high-profile cases should be brought to his office for determination to see which cases should continue to be prosecuted.<\/p>\n
According to Bandawe, Kondowe\u2019s alleged failure to act forced Ligowe to discharge the two accused persons for the second time. Principal Resident Magistrate, Innocent Nebi, in 2012 discharged the accused persons after \u201ccontested applications\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to the February 2 ruling which The Daily Times <\/em>has seen, Bandawe said 15 months since Kondowe\u2019s appointment, no decision has been made on the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cSince the last adjournment [of this case], there has been change of headship at ACB. The new Director General asked for a list of high-profile cases to be given to him to review and determine the way forward for each case,\u201d Bandawe is quoted in the court document.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAs counsel handling this matter, I filed the list. I have not had feedback from him on the way forward. Normally, since any prosecution by ACB is done on behalf of the Director General, it is increasingly difficult for me to proceed until the Director General advises the best way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n According to court documents, Bandawe further told the court that his contract with ACB expired in July last year and was not renewed.<\/p>\n In view of that, Bandawe said he needed to hand over the files to his successor who is yet to be appointed and asked for an adjournment of the case.<\/p>\n Zwelithini Chipembere and Chancy Gondwe, lawyers for the first and second accused respectively, objected to the request for adjournment and instead applied for the discharge of the accused.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe the State is unable to proceed with the prosecution. Therefore, the court may proceed to discharge the accused person accordingly. We believe there is no good reason why this matter must not be discharged,\u201d said Chipembere.<\/p>\n He also argued that since the matter recommenced in May 2013, ACB has been applying for adjournments without considering the plight of the accused \u201cwho is failing to get employment because of this case\u201d.<\/p>\n Gondwe made similar arguments for the second accused, blaming ACB for lacking good reasons for adjournments and arguing that the accused has a right to a fair trial within reasonable time.<\/p>\n However, Bandawe responded by saying it was within the mandate of the prosecuting agency to review any case. \u201cThey may at the end decide to discontinue or agree that the accused be discharged,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In his ruling, Ligowe slammed the State claims, saying: \u201cThat Director General of the ACB changed or that a prosecutor stopped working with ACB does not hamper the running of the State machinery.\u201d<\/p>\n He, therefore, discharged the accused and said, \u201cI wish there was a way to bar the prosecution from abusing Section 247 (1) of the Corrupt Practices Act in this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked to comment on the matter, Kondowe asked for a questionnaire which he promised to respond to within 24 hours.<\/p>\n Kondowe was, however, yet to respond to the questionnaire sent to him on Saturday as we went to print.<\/p>\n Matiya and Mondiwa were arrested in 2011 following revelations that MHC lost about K105 million by selling 22 houses at highly discounted prices that were said to be less than half of the market value at that time.<\/p>\n Several Cabinet ministers under former president Bingu wa Mutharika, including his brother (now President) Peter Mutharika, some Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) loyalists and senior government officials at that time, are reported to have benefited from the dubious sale of the houses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) prosecutor, David Bandawe, has accused the Bureau\u2019s Director General, Lucas Kondowe, of \u2018influencing\u2019 the second dismissal of a case involving two Malawi Housing Corporation (MHC) former top bosses. In the case, former MHC General Manager, Golden Matiya, and his Deputy Responsible for Technical Services, Floyd Mondiwa, were answering charges of abuse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18374,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18372\/revisions\/18374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}