Hearing of the case in which former president Bakili Muluzi and his former assistant Lyness Whiskey are accused of misappropriating K1.7 billion public funds starts at the High Court in Blantyre Monday.<\/p>\n
Both Judiciary spokesperson, Mlenga Mvula, and Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) spokesperson Egrita Ndala said the court set April 11, 2016 as the date for the commencement of the trial and they have not heard of any changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the date that the court set and we follow what the court says. So, unless there is any communication to the contrary, the case is starting tomorrow,\u201d Ndala said.<\/p>\n
Muluzi and Whiskey are answering criminal charges in the High Court under the Corrupt Practices Act.<\/p>\n
In January this year, lawyers for Muluzi withdrew their application for the Chief Justice to certify that the case goes for constitutional review where constitutional court should determine that the charges were politically motivated and, therefore, be dismissed.<\/p>\n
Just after High Court Judge Maclean Kamwambe, who is hearing the case, granted permission for the constitutional review withdrawal, ACB through its Deputy Director Reyneck Matemba asked the court to set the dates for the criminal case proceedings.<\/p>\n
Judge Kamwambe, who is on record to have expressed his disappointment with the dragging of the case, told the two parties that he had set down April 11 up to the first week of May this year as a period for both hearing and judgment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of Friday, there was nothing showing that there are any changes on what Justice Kamwambe said. So, the case will be there from Monday for a full trial,\u201d Mvula said.<\/p>\n
Muluzi first appeared in court in February 2009 accused of stealing US$11 million donor money and was initially charged with 80 counts of allegedly siphoning aid cash into his private account.<\/p>\n
In November last year, the Parliament\u2019s Legal Affairs Committee summoned the ACB for interrogation over the delay of the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hearing of the case in which former president Bakili Muluzi and his former assistant Lyness Whiskey are accused of misappropriating K1.7 billion public funds starts at the High Court in Blantyre Monday. Both Judiciary spokesperson, Mlenga Mvula, and Anti- Corruption Bureau (ACB) spokesperson Egrita Ndala said the court set April 11, 2016 as the date […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22367","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\/22367","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=22367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22371,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22367\/revisions\/22371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}