By Daniel Zimba:
The Senior Resident Magistrate Court sitting in Blantyre yesterday granted bail to former Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) Director General George Kasakula and Finance Manager Jack Kamwachale.
They are answering charges of abuse of office and mismanagement of funds.
Senior Resident Magistrate Asunta Maxwell granted the bail, following a request by defence lawyer Bentry Nyondo.
Maxwell then ordered the suspects to comply with the bail conditions, which included paying a cash bail bond of K350,000 and providing two non-cash sureties of K2 million each and that they should appear at the South West Police Regional offices every fortnight.
- Advertisement -
The court’s decision was made despite objections from state lawyer, Josephine Gwaza.
Gwaza said the state was ready to parade witnesses in the case but requested the court to grant them six weeks before bringing the witnesses, which the court accepted.
However, Gwaza said: “Should the bail be granted to the accused, we ask the court to consider that the accused should surrender their travel documents, a bail bond of not less than K5 million each, and that they should commit to showing up at Chichiri Police Station.”
In his argument during the hearing, defence lawyer Nyondo asked the court to disregard Gwaza’s request regarding bail conditions, describing it as an attempt to deny his clients access to bail, which he argued was their constitutional right.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
In an interview after the hearing, Nyondo expressed satisfaction with the court’s judgment, arguing that his clients were cooperative and had surrendered themselves to the fiscal police immediately after learning of their impending arrests; hence, they deserved bail.
“The court has ordered that when the state is ready, they should file a notice of hearing, and we will be asking for disclosures from today or probably next week so that we also get prepared enough before trial actually commences,” Nyondo said.
Among other crimes, the court heard that the two allegedly committed a conspiracy to defraud MBC, contrary to Section 323 of the Penal Code.
The court statement indicated that between July and December 2025, the two approved and authorized the expenditure of about K1.8 billion from the corporation’s account, knowing that the payments were irregular and not for legitimate institutional purposes.
They also allegedly abused their respective offices, contrary to Section 95(2) of the Penal Code, by approving and authorizing payments of allowances for themselves, amounting to $2,800 and $2,100 respectively for a delegation to Italy that was meant for technocrats in the engineering section.
The two are also alleged to have approved and authorized payment of K8, 621,000 for the construction of a booth for broadcasting a program known as “Timvetse,” knowing that the project was not within the mandate of approved activities of the institution.
However, Kasakula and Kamwachale denied all the allegations raised against them. The Fiscal Police in Blantyre arrested the two on Wednesday.
Earlier, MBC’s Board of Directors fired Kasakula as Director General of the institution for “gross misconduct.”
The board’s decision followed Kasakula’s appearance before its Human Resource and Administration Committee the previous week on a charge of politicizing the public broadcaster.
Kasakula was suspended from the role of Director General of the state broadcaster in October 2025, soon after the change of government.
He was appointed into the role in 2021.
