Cashgate convict Leonard Kalonga has revealed that opposition People’s Party (PP) hired Paul Mphwiyo in the position of Budget Director as a reward for a role he played in the plunder of public funds which was later used to fund the party.
Kalonga made the revelations when he was testifying in the where Mphwiyo and 17 others are accused of defrauding government money amounting to MK2.4 billion.
During his second day of testimony, Kalonga told the court that the first scheme which was like a trial worth close to 80 million kwacha, Peoples Party got 60 percent and the remaining 40 percent was shared among themselves including Mphwiyo, Contractors, people from treasury, tourism who got K2.5 million kwacha to share equally amongst the four of them -Mr. George Banda, Mr. Mphatso, Mr. Mzanda and Kalonga.
“After this I got the call from Mr. Siti and Chipendo from treasury who expressed disappointed with how the shares went on and threatened not to cooperate again if we don’t revise the percentages of sharing the money. I personally drove to Mr. Mphwiyo office with my colleague Mr. George Banda , Chief Accountant at our ministry at capital hill, this is when I first met him in his office as we used to do our meetings at car parks in town as mostly we were meeting in cars.
“Here, Mphwiyo told us that he was not surprised with the behaviour of the two as they are fond of that and told us he can do without them and just brushed off their threats. We left it there and I didn’t tell the two what Mr. Mphwiyo said that he can do without the two I just told them that he has promised to work on the new way of sharing the percentages,” explained Kalonga.
Kalonga has since also implicated former senior official in the Accountant General office, Clemency Madzi, Fourth accused person in the case, telling the court that he once met him at Civic office car park in his (Madzi) BMW car where they were discussing on the shares they will want from accountant general office in the next funding request which this time was discussed before the money was requested to avoid anymore arguments.
The case continues today at Civic Centre in the capital Lilongwe.
