The evidence of senior banking official Marie Antoinette Blignaut, who will continue to testify before Judge Annel Silungwe today, might leave the prosecution case against 11 persons accused of having had a hand in the November 17 2000 robbery of N$5,3 million at Brakwater near Windhoek with a gap big enough for a proverbial cash-in-transit vehicle to drive through.

That is because, in the words of Deputy Prosecutor-General Danie Small yesterday, the case for the prosecution depends to a large extent on new bank notes with certain serial numbers.

In the indictment against the 11 it is alleged that batches of the stolen fortune, of which some N$4 million-plus remains unaccounted for, were later recovered from some of the accused and linked to the money that had been issued by the Bank of Namibia.

This includes some N$909 250 in N$50 notes that were found in a house in Cape Town, South Africa, where suspects Vincent Mabuza, Mike Sandile Mabena, Ismael Oaeb, Arvo Natangwe Haipinge and Brandon Similo were arrested five days after the heist.

In September 2001 some N$200 000 in N$50 notes which is also alleged to have been part of the stolen money was recovered from where one of the suspects, Bertha Nanduda, had buried it near a mahangu field at her family's homestead in the north, it is charged.

Another N$100 000 that was linked to the stolen money was also recovered when suspect Immanuel Handjaba Kaukungua deposited it into his bank account at Oranjemund in February 2001, while more of the money that was linked to the heist was also deposited into the bank account of suspect Joseph Heinrich in January and February 2000, it is charged.

Blignaut testified that City Savings and Investment Bank asked the central bank to issue it with a total of N$7,36 million on November 16 2000. Of this money, N$3 million consisted of new N$50 notes.

These new notes came from a N$5 million batch of notes of which the range of serial numbers - P6450001 to P6550000 - was noted down.

However, on the same day N$100 000 from the same batch was issued to the Commercial Bank of Namibia. Furthermore, the first new notes from that batch had already been issued from November 14, Blignaut added.

Exactly which notes out of that N$5 million batch went to CSIB - and by implication could have ended up being stolen, and later being recovered from the suspects - was not recorded, it was indicated to the court.

Blignaut is set to return to the witness stand today, after she was asked yesterday to look for more records from the Bank of Namibia that might be able to indicate what happened to the other notes from that range of currency when it was issued from November 14 onwards.

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