Malawi holds former army chief Paul Valentino Phiri on five arms-trafficking counts

Malawi's Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested retired General Paul Valentino Phiri on Thursday and said he would face five counts of abuse of office and dealing in property linked to terrorism. The charges, the bureau said, arise from allegations that he facilitated illegal arms trafficking in June and July 2025, while he was head of the Malawi Defence Force. His first court appearance, set for the Area 3 Court in Lilongwe on Thursday, was moved to Friday. He spent the night in police custody.

Phiri is 54. He commanded the defence force from July 2023 until October 2025, the month after former president Lazarus Chakwera lost the general election. His lawyer, Powell Nkutabasa, told AFP the main allegations were misuse of office, a breach of procurement rules, and dealing in terrorist property. He told local reporters he had been ready for Thursday's hearing and had been told to come back the next day. The bureau gave no further detail on the counts and did not name a buyer, a route or a weapon.

The public allegation behind the arrest is older than the charge sheet, and weaker. Months ago the Platform for Investigative Journalism reported, on what it described as unverified material drawn from purported US intelligence, that Malawi military personnel may have helped Sudanese rebels obtain heavy weapons. The account, as the platform published it, had a cargo aircraft landing at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe, weapons briefly offloaded and then reloaded onto a flight to Sudan via Chad, and documents that allegedly named the Malawi Defence Force as the end user. The weapons were said to include heavy equipment and missiles. The bureau has not adopted that narrative in its statement. It has said the charges concern June and July 2025 and illegal arms trafficking. The gap between a journalist's account of a CIA tracking file and a five-count charge sheet is the part a court will have to close.

Sudan is at war, and weapons with a false end-user certificate are a known trade. An end-user document that names a small African army is useful to a shipper precisely because the army is not the destination. If the PIJ account is right, the Malawi Defence Force was the name on the paper, not the unit that took delivery. If it is wrong, Phiri is in a cell on a different set of facts that the bureau has not yet described. Nkutabasa's summary, misuse of office and procurement, could fit either a real diversion or a contract that never left the country.

The timing of the arrest sits a year after Phiri left the post. Chakwera's defeat was in September 2025. Phiri's tenure ended the following month. A retired service chief charged by an anti-corruption bureau, rather than by a military court, is a civilian case. Dealing in terrorist property is a label that raises the possible sentence and the politics. It does not, on Thursday's statement, identify which armed group in Sudan is alleged to have received anything.

Friday's hearing at Area 3 is the first moment the counts have to be read in open court. Until then the known facts are the five counts, the two months named by the bureau, the lawyer's account of the allegations, and a night in custody after a postponed appearance. The airport story remains an unverified report. It is not yet evidence.