In February last year, I flew to Washington, D.C., to meet Banda. She left Malawi in September 2014, a few months after the election loss, and moved into her daughter’s condominium in Fairfax, Virginia, with her husband, former Chief Justice of Malawi Richard Banda. While it was a perfectly fine suburban-American home, the condo seemed a tight space for two former dignitaries. That evening, Richard mostly sat quiet, almost physically displaying his support and deference to his wife’s accomplishments while slumped into the couch in a country club sweater. Though wary of my intentions, Banda told me nobody in the media had ever asked to hear her side of the Cashgate story, and she welcomed the opportunity. She wore one of her signature bright Malawian dresses and a matching hat, like she was still in Lilongwe standing on a podium before her country.

Rather than a stain, Banda told me she considered Cashgate to be her greatest accomplishment as president. “I brought out Cashgate,” she said. “I don’t know how many presidents in Africa [would] hold a forensic audit in their government, during their time.” Her fight against corruption, she told me, was what should stand out. Cashgate was not an event that happened only during her term, she said, but “a continuation of theft” that had been happening in Malawi for years.

She was correct that the theft of money that was exposed in 2013 — which Baker Tilly estimated at 24 billion kwacha — turned out to be just a hint of the pilferage that had been happening since well before Banda had been president. In 2016, an expanded audit by RSM Global on the government’s spending found 236 billion kwacha, or $800 million, in payments that could not be accounted for between 2009 and 2014, an amount equivalent to 40 percent of the government’s annual revenues.

The RSM audit detailed instances of bid splitting, in which the same company bids against itself for a government project under two different names. It found double payments, overpayments and payments for goods not supplied; multi-million-dollar payments to companies listed in the Panama Papers; a payment for police uniforms that would have provided every officer in the country with 14 sets of fatigues; and a contract for tear gas and rubber bullets at seven times the going rate.

The initial Baker Tilly report identified seven people affiliated with companies connected to Cashgate who had recently stood in parliamentary elections, including Banda’s son (he has not been charged with any crimes) and candidates from at least three major political parties. The theft was a large and sprawling mess of individuals and cartels in and out of government, and it started well before Banda was president.

“The Cashgate process that happened in 2013 was a perfection of a system, a manipulation of the system, that had already taken place some three years previously under a different regime,” said an expert who works with the International Centre for Asset Recovery, an arm of the Basel Institute on Governance, which assists with corruption investigations in Malawi, including those that are part of Cashgate. “What we see now with some of the earlier cases of investigation is that they were a forerunner to what took place in 2013.”

Much of the theft happened during the rule of Bingu wa Mutharika, before what the expert at ICAR called the “pure Cashgate” of 2013 occurred. Many believe this has given incentive for Peter Mutharika to focus on 2013 cases in order to protect his brother’s legacy, a key reason why Henry Kachaje, the economist, said the executive branch’s control over ACB appointees is troubling. “ACB will only act on cases mostly of people that are not connected to the current political system,” Kachaje told me. “If the cases are involving the PP government, they will go full throttle, because you get political mileage by weakening that party. You become stronger.”

Banda told me Peter was trying to strengthen himself for the 2019 election by keeping her out of the country. In May 2017, at the opening of a Trade Fair in Blantyre, Peter taunted Banda in public. “Tell that someone who stole our money and fled the country to come back. Tell that somebody to come here in Malawi,” he said sarcastically. “I want you here.”

If she returned — or when, she assured me — Banda feared she would be the next former Malawian president to be arrested. In April 2017, her sister, Cecilia Kumpukwe, was arrested along with another top People’s Party official, charged with writing a fake resignation letter in the name of the vice president. Banda told me the arrests were meant either to scare her from returning to Malawi, or to test how Malawians would react if someone in Banda’s close circle was jailed. After her sister’s arrest, Banda texted me via WhatsApp. “I grieve for my beloved country,” she wrote. “Now I am more determined than before to return home. Let him kill me.”

In the U.S., Banda was leading a life typical of a former foreign leader. When we first spoke, she had a joint fellowship at two distinguished think tanks, the Center for Global Development and the Woodrow Wilson Center. She’d been writing a book, traveling the world, giving talks at the U.N., and hanging out with other current and former world leaders through groups like the Club de Madrid. Last May, she went to Japan to accept the Global Women’s Leadership Award. In April, she was in Addis Ababa steering the African Union’s African Women Leaders Network. She’s always been respected abroad, but it was clear she wanted to be in Malawi.

When I visited her in Fairfax again last summer, we had dinner at Bonefish Grill, a casual seafood franchise in a strip mall. Used to being chauffeured around Malawi, the Bandas didn’t have a car, so I picked them up in my brother’s wobbly 17-year-old RAV4. As I wiped away crumbs left by my niece and nephew before letting in the former president and chief justice, I could see why Banda was anxious to get home.

“This is somebody who has lived in a 16-bedroom house,” she had said about her former government-owned residence, which she called Kamuzu Palace. If she was the mastermind behind Cashgate, there was no sign of her payoff. She lamented her situation, living in her daughter’s condo. “If you ask in Malawi…they will tell you, ‘She went to the U.S. She lives in a huge house. She lives in a mansion.’ Where else can I stay? I can’t afford anywhere else. I live here.”

As a retired president, per Malawi law, she is owed a tax-free monthly pension, a housing allowance, two cars, utilities and telephone, medical services, a personal physician, in-country air transport, an allowance for staff, medical insurance, clothes, and food. She wanted to take advantage of these benefits, none of which had been paid out since she lost the election. She never dreamed that Peter would win in 2014, much less that Cashgate would be the fuel that propelled him to victory. “I really feel so sorry for myself,” she told me. “For trying to straighten a situation, I’ve become a victim.”

“Every president in Malawi arrests his predecessor,” Banda told me at her condo after our dinner at Bonefish. “That is how I know I will be arrested.” It was late in the evening, and we were drinking tea. She seemed completely exhausted with the fight against Cashgate, the fight against Peter Mutharika, the fight to defend her legacy. “After all I’ve done, they call me a thief,” she said. “This is what kills me.”

At least some Malawians missed Banda. They missed her so much they danced in large People’s Party gatherings wearing chitenjes, traditional cloths, bearing her likeness. They sang and danced and prayed for her to come back, as I saw in videos Banda texted me. Since our first meeting, Banda and I had texted often about happenings in Malawi. When her sister was arrested, when Peter said something nasty about her, when there was an interesting twist in the Mpwhiyo trial, when a stampede at the national soccer stadium killed eight of her people. She wanted to be there, not having to rely on social media or her phone to get updates on her country. “That’s my home, and I will go home,” she told me. “The question is, when I go, am I going to come out alive?”

It was not an unfounded question. During our in-person talks, she repeatedly banged the table between us. On the phone, she laughed a lot, and told jokes over WhatsApp even when discussing serious matters (“I think my book will be written in Prison Hahahah!”). But she is 68 years old and nowadays moves slowly on her feet. Sometimes, when talking about Cashgate and the election, she looked away and her voice became somber. “I never stopped to think that Peter might win,” she told me. “If there is anybody that he hates, it’s me.”