3 arrested over Shooting of Govt Corruption-busting official in Malawi

Police in Malawi have arrested three suspects over the shooting of a top government official who was on a corruption-busting crusade.

Budget Director Paul Mphwiyo, 37, was shot and seriously wounded Friday night by unknown assailants.

He was evacuated to Johannesburg, South Africa, where he is said to be still in critical but stable condition.

‘Yes, we have arrested three suspects following the attempted assassination of the Budget Director,’ said police spokeswoman Rhoda Manjolo Tuesday evening. ‘We are currently interrogating them.’

Manjolo could, however, not identify the suspects but in an earlier interview Inspector General of Police Loti Dzonzi said police have collected several pieces on the motive of the shooting.

‘We are zeroing in on the syndicate,’ said the police chief.

President Joyce Banda, whose office said Sunday Mphwiyo’s shooting was not regular ‘robbery’ but was ‘targeted’ for closing in on a corruption syndicate, held a high-level crisis meeting with top security officials, including Dzonzi and Army Commander Gen. Henry Odillo.

‘We are assuring government officials and the general public of security,’ said Vice-President Khumbo Kachali after the closed-door meeting.

Sources say Mphwiyo was closing in on a syndicate that includes politicians, businessmen and top government officials, that siphon millions of dollars from government using dubious contracts with government.

Soon after his appointment by President Banda, Mphwiyo, the youthful US-trained technocrat has overhauled Malawi’s porous finance systems that left a lot of loopholes for corrupt government officials and businessmen to siphon money.

He has cancelled several dubious contracts with government worth millions of dollars, a development that left him unpopular among other government officials and their business associates.

Prior to his shooting, Mphwiyo confided to friends and family that he was receiving anonymous phone calls warning him that he was ‘marked’.

‘He had told us that he was receiving death threats but he never thought it was serious,’ Nation of Sunday quoted one of his associates as saying. ‘He believed it was just some disgruntled people who thought he was spoiling their business deals, that is, fraudulent government contracts and closing out loopholes.’

The statement from the presidency also alluded to the fact that Mphwiyo was targeted for cleaning up the government finance systems.

‘The government wishes to notify the public that it strongly believes that Mr Mphwiyo’s shooting was not just any other robbery but a planned and targeted attack aimed at silencing him and the Government in the fight against high levels of corruption and fraud,’ the statement said.

It added ‘The President and the government therefore wish to assure all Malawians that the fight against corruption and organised fraud in government, which had become entrenched in the past years, will in no way be deterred by this shooting but it will be sustained to ensure that these evils are rooted out of the Government and the nation at large.’

Corruption is endemic in Malawi government finance systems so much that former Director of Public Prosecution Fahad Assani is on record as saying over 30 per cent of the national budget is lost through corruption.

Former president Bakili Muluzi set up the Anti-Corruption Bureau to fight graft.

Muluzi himself and several former government officials are currently in court answering several corruption cases. Over US$ 100 million was said to have been lost through corruption during the 10 years Muluzi was in power.

The Banda administration has also just announced that former president Bingu wa Mutharika, who died in April last year from cardiac arrest complications, dubiously amassed a net wealth of 60 billion Malawi kwacha (about US$ 174 million) during the seven years he was in power.

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