By Mercy Matonga
In a rare scenario, the Blantyre Chief Resident Magistrate’s Court has questioned a move by State prosecutors to approve a bail request by South Africa national William Bilderberg who is accused of being a fugitive from justice and faces extradition.
The State previously opposed Bilderberg’s bail application on three occasions but consented to the plea in the fourth instance.
It argued Bilderberg was no longer a flight risk.
While rejecting the previous bail requests, the court had ruled that Bilderberg’s past record as a fugitive from justice and his possession of South African passport made him a big flight risk.
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In the fourth bail ruling, dated December 15 2023, Chief Resident Magistrate Chisomo Msokera has once again rejected the application and condemned the State and Bilderberg’s lawyers for allegedly acting in a manner that “may undermine justice”.
In an apparent show of frustration with the State’s actions, the magistrate has recused himself from the case, arguing his views on the matter would cloud his handling of the case.
But before recusing himself, Msokera attacked the State for allegedly joining ranks with Bilderberg’s lawyers to undermine justice.
“We must emphasise that public confidence in the authority of the court is undermined where the court is made to rubberstamp illogical decisions which do not reconcile with the law and the facts.
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“This is why we refuse to take part in such an exercise. We refuse to be a referee that is blind to the interests of justice,” the magistrate said.
He added that the basis of the decision by the State is that Venezuela, which wanted Bilderberg to answer criminal charges, had deleted its Interpol request for his arrest.
“We cannot help but marvel at how both the applicant and the State have reasoned and arrived at the conclusion that the applicant (Bilderberg) has ceased to be a flight risk.
“Before we conclude, we must express our concern with the way this application has been handled by the bar. We do not think the bar is incompetent.
“We think that the bar is deliberately putting the interests of the applicant ahead of the interests of justice. This is contrary to counsel’s duty to the court. And it is more worrying when the prosecution decides to participate in such approach to administration of justice,” Msokera said.
He described the actions by Bilderberg’s lawyers as “match-fixing”, a terms used in organised sports to describe the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a pre-determined result.
Bilderberg, also known as Willem Steenkamp, was arrested in October this year, after Malawian law enforcement agencies became aware of his attempt to invest $20 million in the country’s banks.
According to reports, the Office of the President and Cabinet, allowed Bilderberg to settle in Malawi after he had posed as an investor.
Despite the fact that he was on Interpol’s wanted list, Malawi issued him a passport shortly after his arrival.
He is accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded several individuals in countries such as Venezuela, Botswana and Tanzania.
National Police spokesperson Peter Kalaya is on record as having said that the local law enforcers were in touch with Interpol— the international criminal police organisation that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime control.
