Parliamentary investigation finds officials replaced pension trustees after board rejected costly Amaryllis Hotel purchase.
By Collins Mtika
Malawi’s pension board was restructured from within government after it refused to approve the purchase of a luxury hotel in Blantyre, according to a parliamentary investigation that found officials dissolved the resisting board and installed new trustees who ultimately authorised the K128.7 billion deal.
A 294-page report by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, adopted on 31 March 2026 following weeks of public hearings, reconstructs how the governance of the Public Service Pension Trust Fund was altered after the board rejected the acquisition of the Amaryllis Hotel in January 2024.
The committee concluded that officials in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) intervened in the fund’s governance structure, removed trustees who opposed the deal, and installed a new board that approved the purchase at a price nearly three times higher than independent valuations.
Until now, public discussion about the transaction had focused largely on the hotel’s price, the disappearance of meeting minutes, and the involvement of a firm that was not registered as a property valuer.
The parliamentary report describes a broader pattern: what it characterises as the internal capture of a public pension fund’s governance to reverse a lawful investment decision.
An investment rejected
The transaction began on 2 May 2023, when Cedar Capital Limited, acting for Yusuf Investments Limited, offered the Amaryllis Hotel to the pension fund at an indicative equity value of about K47 billion.
Independent valuations commissioned during the fund’s due diligence broadly confirmed that range. Garden City Properties and Knight Frank Malawi assessed the hotel’s value at between K48 billion and K50 billion.
A separate review by FDH Bank Plc estimated the business value between K26 billion and K35 billion and noted the hotel was not profitable.
NICO Asset Managers, the pension fund’s investment manager, withdrew from the proposed acquisition in December 2023, citing inadequate technical scrutiny and the absence of a specialist hotel operator.
The firm also reimbursed the fund about K85.3 million in expenses connected to the transaction, a step the parliamentary committee described as unusual and indicative of serious reservations about the deal.
On 17 January 2024, the fund’s board formally resolved not to proceed with the purchase.
The meeting that revived the deal
According to the parliamentary report, the transaction was revived less than two months later.
The committee identifies a meeting held on 6 March 2024 in the northern city of Mzuzu as “the genesis of the transaction’s revival.”
Participants included Colleen Zamba, then secretary to the president and cabinet; Prince Kapondamgaga, then chief of staff at state residences; Counsel Chizaso Nyirongo, director of legal affairs in the OPC; Boyd Hamela, chairperson of the pension fund’s investment committee; and George Jim, the fund’s principal officer.
The committee found that during the meeting Zamba elevated the proposed acquisition from an internal investment matter to what she described as a government-level concern.
She directed that the OPC should be represented on the pension board, instructed officials to expedite the transaction, and ordered that weekly progress updates be routed through Nyirongo.
Within 24 hours, on 7 March 2024, Principal Officer Jim issued the first of two commitment letters to the seller, according to the report. A second letter followed on 18 March.
The committee states both letters were issued without authorisation from the board.
When the board met between 13 and 15 March 2024, it reaffirmed its earlier decision not to proceed with the acquisition.
However, the committee found that the commitment letters later became central to arguments that the pension fund faced legal exposure if it withdrew from the deal.
Dissolution of the board
The parliamentary investigation then traces how the governance structure of the pension fund changed over the following year.
In December 2024, a new group of trustees was licensed and completed orientation in South Africa.
But on 12 March 2025, Zamba wrote to the fund’s principal officer expressing concern that the licensing process had taken place before the government, acting as employer, had formally appointed its representatives.
She instructed the fund to halt transactions involving the newly licensed trustees.
The Public Accounts Committee described the intervention as “very irregular”, noting that the authority to appoint employer representatives to the pension board lies with the Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance, not with the OPC.
According to the committee, the directive effectively dissolved the December 2024 board, which had not supported the hotel purchase, and created a governance vacuum that lasted several months.
Reconstituting the board
The report describes what followed as a restructuring of the pension fund’s leadership.
On 12 May 2025 the OPC submitted revised nominations for trustees. Among those retained was Dr Maxwell Tsitsi, Principal Secretary for Administration in the OPC.
On 2 June 2025 Tsitsi nominated Counsel Nyirongo as a trustee.
The committee described this as a circular appointment arrangement: Nyirongo had initially placed Tsitsi on the board, and Tsitsi subsequently nominated Nyirongo.
Under the pension fund’s Trust Deed, the authority to appoint employer representatives lies with the Ministry of Finance rather than the Office of the President and Cabinet.
By September 2025, Nyirongo had become chairperson of the reconstituted board. The committee noted that he had also participated in the March 2024 meeting where the deal was revived.
The report concludes that “what began as external institutional concern was translated into internal control”, meaning that the policy direction introduced at the OPC level was subsequently embedded in the pension fund’s governance structure.
Rapid approval of the purchase
On 25 October 2025, the newly formed board suspended Principal Officer Jim and appointed Boyd Hamela, who had also attended the March 2024 Mzuzu meeting, as acting Principal Officer.
At the same meeting the board resolved to proceed with the Amaryllis acquisition.
According to the parliamentary report, events that followed compressed years of stalled deliberation into less than a month.
On 14 November 2025, EMJ Advisory Public Accountants was engaged to conduct a valuation. The firm acknowledged to the committee that it was not a registered professional valuer.
The company submitted a completed valuation report on the same day it was engaged. The report estimated the hotel’s value at K107 billion and recommended a purchase range of K115 billion to K145 billion.
The committee found the firm relied largely on financial projections supplied by the seller and completed its core analysis within roughly 24 hours.
On the same day the Registrar of Financial Institutions at the Reserve Bank of Malawi issued a directive ordering the pension fund to halt all transactions related to the acquisition.
Three days later, on 17 November 2025, the board signed a sale agreement for K128.7 billion despite the regulator’s stop order.
Seven of the fund’s ten trustees later told the parliamentary committee they had not been aware that the sale agreement had been signed.
Oversight institutions
The parliamentary investigation also examined the roles played by two institutions that could have intervened in the transaction.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), led by Acting Director Gabriel Chembezi, issued a restriction notice on 19 November 2025 but lifted it on 18 December after concluding it had found no evidence of corruption.
However, the committee found that Chembezi had attended the pension fund’s Investment Committee meeting on 17 November as a consultant from the law firm GD Liwimbi and Partners and had reviewed the same sale agreement that later became the subject of the ACB’s inquiry.
The committee described this as a “clear case of conflict of interest.”
The Attorney General, Frank Farouk Mbeta, later cleared concerns raised by the Malawi Law Society in a legal opinion issued on 28 December 2025.
The parliamentary report states that his office had not been informed about the March 2024 meeting in Mzuzu or the acting ACB director’s dual role. By mid-January 2026 approximately K90 billion had already been transferred to the seller.
Pension fund exposure
The committee also raised concerns about the concentration of the pension fund’s investment portfolio.
The Amaryllis purchase alone represented about 29.7 percent of the fund’s total portfolio invested in a single hospitality asset. The fund’s internal investment policy limits exposure to 20 percent.
Before the transaction the fund already held about K72.9 billion in hotel-related investments.
The Public Service Pension Trust Fund manages retirement savings for Malawi’s civil servants. In a country where roughly 70 percent of the population lives on less than $2.15 per day, the fund represents a critical financial safeguard for tens of thousands of public employees.
Consequences and recommendations
The Reserve Bank of Malawi has since traced about K72.6 billion in accounts linked to the transaction and imposed fines of K40 million on each trustee involved.
The Public Accounts Committee has recommended the dissolution of the current board, investigations into possible abuse of office by former secretary to the president and cabinet Colleen Zamba, the suspension of the acting director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, and criminal proceedings where evidence supports them.
Zamba, who is facing criminal charges in Case No. 266 of 2026, did not appear before the committee during its hearings.
In its final assessment, the committee framed the case as a test of institutional accountability.
“This report is not merely an account of a flawed transaction,” the committee wrote. “It is a reaffirmation of the principle that public resources, particularly those held in trust for the future security of citizens, must be managed with the highest standards of integrity.”
For the tens of thousands of Malawian civil servants whose retirement savings were invested through the pension fund, the committee concluded, the question now is whether those standards will be enforced.
