Joyce Banda returns Saturday
Former President Joyce Banda will return home on Saturday, marking the end of more than three years in self-imposed exile.
Banda left the country soon after losing the 2014 presidential elections to President Peter Mutharika.
“I can confirm that, as a party, we have received communication from the office of the former president that she arrives back in Malawi on Saturday to stay,” People’s Party deputy spokesman, Ackson Kalaile Banda said on Monday.
Joyce Banda’s spokesperson, Andekuche Chanthunya, also confirmed that the former president will arrive through Chileka International Airport in Blantyre.
However, Banda faces a warrant of arrest which police say is still valid.
Last July, police issued a warrant of arrest against Banda over alleged abuse of office and money laundering offences, allegedly committed over a two-year period when she was in office.
Police National spokesman, James Kadadzera, Monday said the warrant of arrest is still valid.
Police said the alleged offences were part of Cashgate – a corruption scandal uncovered in 2013- in which senior government officers siphoned billions of dollars from State coffers.
But early this year, the Anti-Corruption Bureau said it still had no solid evidence against the former president partially clearing her name from wrong doing.
Banda has been living in the United States, serving as a distinguished fellow at Woodrow Wilson Center and the Center for Global Development in Washington DC.
Last week she was in South African and attended the funeral of anti-apartheid icon Winnie Mandela.
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