Osward Lutepo, State settle for property re-evaluation
Cashgate convict Osward Lutepo and the State have reached a consensus to re-evaluate the former’s properties which are targeted for confiscation.
The agreement has been reached after both parties came out with different values of the convict’s properties declared in court on June 25 this year.
The convict evaluators in 2013 placed the price of Woget Industries, a company situated in Blantyre over K1.4 billion while the state valued the plant and other machinery at around K300 million.
Further to that, the land on which the industry was built, was declared by Lutepo to be worth K17 million but the state evaluators valued the land to be worth in excess of K17.5million.
The defence counsel, Osward Mtupila, told presiding Judge Redson Kapindu, that the convict has no problems with the court ruling of August 3 in which it upheld the state application to proceed with sentencing instead of starting with confiscation, a process that will see government recovering the stolen properties.
“In the interest of the convict and the interest of the public we had to ask for an adjournment of the case. You will recall that the convict wants to make restitution.
“The property was valued by the convict in 2013 and this year the State appointed evaluators came out with very big discrepancies. So we want an independent evaluator to re-evaluate the properties,” said Mtupila in an interview after the court session yesterday.
He said the process needs to be done before the convict is sentenced because the judge must take into account that Lutepo had made a decision for restitution.
Mtupila said the defence will submit three names of evaluators to the State upon which the latter will pick one to conduct re-evaluation process.
Deputy Director for Anti- Corruption Bureau, Reyneck Matemba, agreed with the defence team.
“Let me emphasise one point, for us as a State apart from having Mr Lutepo punished, our main interest is to recover the properties that was stolen from government,” said Matemba.
He added: “It will be a disservice to the people of Malawi and the nation as a whole to see Mr Lutepo going to prison and serve his sentence without us recovering anything. That is the very same reason why we are not contesting the application by the defence team.”
Matemba said the State want to have the actual value of the properties first before restitution and sentence is meted on the convict.
Both the State and defence asked for 14 days to conduct the re-evaluation exercise, but Kapindu gave both parties up-to August 31.
The judge then warned both sides to stick to the deadline saying he will not entertain any further adjournment of the case.
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