Two Blantyre Water Board (BWB) employees are on the run after defrauding the parastatal of K128 million in two months.
According to local media reports, the two—debt collector Brian Makote and plumber Obina Liwonde— stole money that was paid to BWB by clients.
The employees in June opened an account at Nedbank in Blantyre through which they siphoned K128 million out of K150 million deposited into the account.
The K150 million was received between July and August this year from the Malawi Police Service (MPS) and State Residences through four cheques payable to BWB.
According to the local meda, the Nedbank account was named BWB Social Welfare so when the employees received cheques saying ‘pay BWB’ or ‘pay Blantyre Water Board’, they would add Social Welfare at the end in order to deposit the money into their account.
Using the trick, they stole K128 million most of which they withdrew while K25 million was transferred to an FDH account belonging to Liwonde.
Earlier this month, Makote went to Nedbank to withdraw K20 million which raised suspicion and the scam was uncovered.
Meanwhile, the employees are at large as they left the country through Mwanza border once the fraud was revealed.
Henry Bakuwa