Malawi: Journalists Threatened With Arrest for Non-Cooperation With Anti-Corruption Body

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has warned that it will soon start arresting journalists who make corruption allegations but refuse to cooperate during investigations, on charges of obstructing justice and hiding evidence.

On 6 November 2008, ACB Director Alex Nampota said the bureau has been unable to investigate many alleged corruption cases published or broadcast in the media because reporters have not been forthcoming with information to help during investigations.


According to Nampota, most journalists refuse to give details of their sources or share with the bureau the information they publish on allegations of corrupt practices.

"We have summoned a lot of journalists to give us further details anonymously, but reporters insist on clinging to their ethics. As a result, we can't manage to investigate a lot of cases," Nampota was reported as saying in a local daily.

Journalists in Malawi have been in the forefront of writing about cases of alleged corruption involving high ranking officials, some of whom the bureau has managed to successfully pursue and convict. For most stories the media have quoted off-the-record sources and, when summoned by the bureau to reveal them, the journalists have been refusing because their ethics do not allow them to disclose anonymous sources. Commenting on this, the chairperson of MISA Malawi, Brian Ligomeka, said as much as journalists were playing a crucial role in fighting corruption, the bureau should not expect them to disclose their sources as that would violate their code of ethics.

The most notable case which the bureau has pursued, and secured a conviction in, involved a former education minister in 1994 who was implicated in a school stationery procurement scam, later known as the Field York scandal. When the issue was made public, the minister sued a newspaper for defamation and was awarded damages. The newspaper failed to settle the amount and folded up. However, the case was pursued by the ACB and in 2007 the former education minister, who also served as Speaker, was convicted and is now serving a jail term. The media also broke the news that a cabinet minister used state funds for his wedding and, when the issue was pursued by the ACB, the minister was dropped from cabinet and was consequently convicted by the court, thereby losing his parliamentary seat. Currently, the bureau is also investigating the information minister after the media reported that she received a bribe from a firm based in Asia for the awarding of a tourism concession.