Africa-Press – Malawi. Attorney General (AG) Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda has maintained that government will not give up on businessperson Zameer Karim after he failed to honour a court order that he should pay K6.2 billion.
In an interview on Tuesday, Nyirenda said his office has applied for some further processes and is just waiting for dates of hearing. He could, however, not be drawn to comment on what his office is demanding in the fresh application after previous applications failed to yield results.
Early this year, Nyirenda threatened Karim with bankruptcy proceedings. With more than nine months gone without reports that Karim had paid back the money, The Daily Times wanted to find out from the AG whether he had run out of options and given up on the matter.
“Not at all,” Nyirenda said.
In March this year, the High Court gave Karim seven days to pay the Malawi Government K6.189 billion after failing to honour a November 13, 2020 court judgement to pay K2.3 billion in connection with the Malawi Police Service food rations contract.
Of the K6.189 billion, K3.824 billion is interest accrued on the ordered amount. In his endorsement of a bankruptcy notice, Nyirenda warned that failure to comply with the order, Karim would have committed an act of bankruptcy, on which bankruptcy proceedings might be taken against him.
“If however, you have a counter-claim, set-off or cross demand which equals or exceeds the amount claimed by the Attorney General (Malawi Police Service) in respect of the judgment or order and which you could not set up in the action or other proceedings in which the said judgment or order was obtained, you must within 14 days apply to the Court to set aside this Notice by filing with the Registrar a Sworn Statement to the above effect,” Nyirenda said in his notice to the businessperson.
According to court records, the Malawi Police Service entered into a contract with Karim’s Pioneer Investments to supply 500,000 food ration packs at about K2.1 billion.
But Karim, according to court documents, did not have sufficient funds to execute the contract; hence, he approached CDH Investment Bank Limited to provide K700 million. One of the conditions was an agreement of assignment of proceeds under the contract to CDH Investment Bank.
In 2017, CDH Investment Bank sued the AG’s office and the Malawi Government was made to pay about K2.3 billion which included the loan Karim had obtained from the bank, interest and some collection fees.
Government, which had already paid Karim his money, then sued him, through the AG, for making Capital Hill pay twice in the matter. Karim was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
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