Hauwanga tells court of fiddled account

Werner Menges

BUSINESS mogul Ben Hauwanga has told a judge in the Windhoek High Court that a former employee of hardware and building materials dealer Pupkewitz Megabuild admitted to him that he had fiddled with an account of Hauwanga in an attempt to deceive people doing a stocktaking exercise at the company’s Oshikango branch.

Hauwanga testified as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of three former employees of Pupkewitz Megabuild on Friday last week. The three men – Immanuel David Freitas Dias, Edgar Cardoso Alves, and Mark Paul Alves – are accused of having defrauded Pupkewitz Megabuild and Hauwanga to the tune of more than N$5,2 million while they were employed at the company’s Oshikango branch. They are also alleged to have stolen goods to the total value of more than N$1,06 million from Pupkewitz Megabuild.

The alleged fraud and theft is claimed to have been committed between August 2007 and March 2008.

The three accused pleaded not guilty to 139 counts of fraud, alternatively theft, and two further charges of theft when their trial started before Acting Judge Petrus Unengu in March.

The State is alleging that the three accused stole stock from Pupkewitz Megabuild at Oshikango and delivered this to a site where Dias was building his own warehouse, or sold stock to Angolan nationals on credit while no payments from the Angolans made it into Pupkewitz Megabuild’s coffers.

It is also alleged that the accused falsely pretended that materials with a total value of more than N$5,2 million had been sold on credit to Hauwanga and his business, B.H. Motor Spares, while that, in fact, was not the case.

Hauwanga told the court that he noticed what he thought were some irregularities on his account with Pupkewitz Megabuild towards the end of 2007.

He said he nevertheless kept paying the account until he made a phone call to the Pupkewitz Megabuild Oshikango branch in February or March 2008 to query his account. He had noticed that goods were reflected on his account while he or his business never bought or received those goods from Pupkewitz Megabuild, Hauwanga said.

He first spoke to Dias, who was the branch manager, and was told by Dias that perhaps his colleague Edgar Alves, who was a sales representative, had put the goods on his account, Hauwanga claimed.

Hauwanga said he then phoned Alves, who told him that he had indeed placed goods on his account and explained that he had done so because people were doing stocktaking unexpectedly at the company’s Oshikango branch. Alves also told him that he would take the goods off his account again as soon as the stocktaking was over, Hauwanga claimed.

He further alleged that Alves told him that he would be paid if he allowed the goods to reflect on his account for a while longer. Hauwanga said he refused to go along with Alves’ suggestion, and he then alerted other people within the Pupkewitz Megabuild management.

The wealth he has accumulated in his life has been the result of hard work and none of it has come from bribery and stealing, Hauwanga said.

He said he had been a customer of Pupkewitz Megabuild from 2004. “I trusted Pupkewitz,” he said.

Alves and Dias are disputing Hauwanga’s testimony, their defence lawyers, Titus Mbaeva and Lucius Murorua, indicated to the court.

Hauwanga’s testimony got the two men into an agitated state in the dock, prompting such animated head-shaking and mutterings of disagreement from them that Acting Judge Unengu warned them twice to remain silent and not to interrupt proceedings in court.

The trial was postponed yesterday. It is scheduled to continue during the week of 18 to 22 November.

The three accused remain free on a warning from the court.