If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African Proverb

The current corruption scandals that are besetting Malawi are unprecedented and continue to rock the country and its political classes. The Cashgate scandal, as it has become known, broke in September 2013 when the former Budget Director, Paul Mphwiyo, was shot in a failed assassination attempt. The violent incident led to the exposure of a systematic and organised looting of public finances that involved some ten Ministries, and investigations in the office of the Accountant General revealed that significant sums of government money had been lost.

A subsequent forensic audit of suspect transactions for the months April to October 2013 exposed the scale of the scandal.

The means of defrauding the Malawian public was, surprisingly, rather straightforward. In 2005 the government had developed an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) to support government departments in their budgeting, accounting and reporting. Critically, IFMIS also managed payments to suppliers, approved in compliance with check and control procedures, leading to the printing of Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) cheques at the Accountant General’s Department.

By 2011 the system was already suspected to be corrupt but the warning signs were missed and/or covered up. By 2013, IFMIS was issuing large numbers of government cheques for services never delivered that were cashed at speed through the commercial banks. Once the cheques had been extracted from the RBM the corrupt public officials then deleted the cheques from the system. Large numbers of business-persons used their accounts to launder the proceeds and dissipate the proceeds in cash.

The total loss to Malawi in IFMIS and other related frauds now stands at in excess of MKA 15 billion (over $282M).

Not surprisingly, confidence in the government is now at an all time low with some 72% of Malawians expressing concern at the handling of the Cashgate scandal.

Malawi’s response has, according to many, been protracted – with only some 8 convictions to date after numerous arrests were made in late 2013. Assets restrained and confiscated have been minimal. However, a closer examination reveals that Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) are moving ahead, deploying novel legal techniques that will provide Malawi with some chance to restore public confidence in the rule of law by investigating and prosecuting both the launderers of the money and the higher ranking masterminds of the Cashgate scandal.

The endorsement by the DPP of plea bargaining rules and the use of more forensic skills and international expertise in the ACB and the DPP are yielding results. The use of the new plea bargaining rules has now led to a number of guilty pleas, opening up the prospect of further trials against the key players. Greater collaboration with the judiciary, still at a delicate stage given many of the new legal issues inherent in such cases, is leading to improvements in investigations, prosecutions and, in due course, safe convictions.

The greater use of restraint powers to confiscate the proceeds of the Cashgate crimes will follow, although the law presents significant challenges.

If the prosecution of some of the Cashgate crimes is successful and some of the stolen assets are recovered, it will be due to the commitment, coordination and considerable bravery of the staff of the DPP, ACB and others in law enforcement. This will go a long way in restoring public confidence in the country. It would seem that this time grand corruption in Africa has an enemy worthy of the fight.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Issa Njauju the Director of Corporate Services of the Anti Corruption Bureau, who was murdered in July 2015, allegedly in connection with the Cashgate investigations.