{"id":68440,"date":"2018-07-18T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=68440"},"modified":"2018-07-18T18:31:37","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T16:31:37","slug":"police-fraud-pay-back-or-face-legal-action-dpp-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/07\/18\/police-fraud-pay-back-or-face-legal-action-dpp-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Police fraud: Pay back, or face legal action, DPP told"},"content":{"rendered":"

[dropcap][\/dropcap]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mutharika – his DPP given 2 days<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[dropcap]Y[\/dropcap]outh And Society (YAS), a Mzuzu based rights group, has given the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) two days in which to pay back the K145 million it benefited from a dubious K2.8 billion ($3.8 million) police food contract.<\/p>\n

The DPP has been under siege, especially President Peter Mutharika<\/a> who is specifically mentioned in a leaked investigative report of fraudulently benefiting from a near K2.8 billion government contact.<\/p>\n

The K145 million from Pioneer Investments \u2013 the firm that won the food contract — was deposited into a DPP account for which the President is the sole signatory.<\/p>\n

However, Mutharika early this month described the accusations as \u201cfake news\u201d as part of a ploy to smear him ahead of a national election next year.<\/p>\n

But YAS executive director , Charles Kajoloweka, is not buying that. He has asked the DPP , through his lawyers, to pay back the money in two days or face legal action.<\/p>\n

Through their lawyer Bright Theu of Ritz attorneys at law, YAS is demanding the DPP to pay back to public coffers the sum of\u00a0\u00a0K145 million, failing which they have asked the party to within two days indicate how they intend\u00a0\u00a0to repay the money.<\/p>\n

From Pioneer Investments, YAS is demanding a refund of K466 million plus compound interest or face similar legal consequences similar to the DPP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have instructions from Youth And Society (YAS), a duly registered non-government organisation (our client) to demand a refund of the sum of MWK145,000,000 (One Hundred and Fourty-Five Million Malawi Kwacha) paid by Pioneer Investment by cheque No. 000043 dated 13 April 2016 to the account indicated in subject line. We demand that the refund be made to the Government of Malawi,\u201d reads the letter of demand from Bright Theu of Ritz Associates written to the party\u2019s secretary general Grazelder Jeffrey.<\/p>\n

The demand letter gives the party two days in which to respond or face court action<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease note that unless the sum of MWK145 million is repaid to a Government account and evidence of the same is provided to us on behalf of YAS; or you indicate to us how you intend to repay the said sums within 2 days hereof, we have instructions to take necessary steps to recover what rightfully and beneficially belongs to the people of Malawi,\u201d reads the letter.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s anti-graft body, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, has been investigating a K2.8 billion Malawi police food supply contract awarded to Pioneer Investments – a firm owned by an Asian-born Malawian businessman Zameer Karim.<\/p>\n

Karim denied wrongdoing. \u201cMy company was awarded the contract after a rigorous process so I don\u2019t see any wrongdoing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

ACB director general Reneck Matemba has said that a foreign investigator has been hired to investigate the leak and that investigation is not yet over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[dropcap][\/dropcap] [dropcap]Y[\/dropcap]outh And Society (YAS), a Mzuzu based rights group, has given the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) two days in which to pay back the K145 million it benefited from a dubious K2.8 billion ($3.8 million) police food contract. The DPP has been under siege, especially President Peter Mutharika who is specifically mentioned in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68440","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=68440"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68454,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68440\/revisions\/68454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}