The effort by former President Peter Mutharika of Malawi to lift restrictions on his bank accounts that were frozen as part of a corruption investigation has ended in failure.
On Friday, his appeal to get his accounts unfrozen by the country’s anti-graft agency was denied by Malawi’s high court.
According to Africanews, last August, Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) froze Mutharika and his wife Gertrude’s personal bank accounts in an investigation seeking to expose his involvement in a cement scandal of 5 billion kwacha ($6.6 million).
The bureau claims that between 2018 and 2019, Mutharika’s tax number was used to import cement duty-free.
His former bodyguard and the former head of the Malawi Tax Authority were involved in the inquiry in July.
Since then, the Bureau has said that it has no concrete evidence against the former President and has partly explained his identity.
Allegations of corruption have plagued Malawi’s former leaders, reports Africanews.
In 2014, after being implicated in the so-called Cashgate scandal in which government officials siphoned off millions of dollars of public money, Mutahrika’s predecessor, Joyce Banda, fled the country.
Mutharika lost his re-election bid to an anti-corruption crusader, Lazarus Chakwera, last June.
