NCH still waiting for truck payment proof

By: WERNER MENGES

LONG legal proceedings could have been avoided if the former financial manager of transport company Namib Contract Haulage, Kongo Mokaxwa, simply produced proof that his close corporation paid for three trucks imported from China in early 2007, the chairperson of the NCH board of directors remarked in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.

The board of directors of NCH requested Mokaxwa to provide it with proof that his close corporation paid for the trucks which landed at the Walvis Bay harbour with a consignment of buses and trucks imported by NCH, but to this day the board is still waiting for this proof, NCH board chairperson Elias Shanyengana told Acting Judge Maphios Cheda on the third day of his testimony in the trial of Mokaxwa and two co-accused.
Shanyengana questioned why Mokaxwa – who can produce invoices showing the prices that the manufacturer of the trucks, China FAW Group, quoted Mokaxwa’s close corporation, Kongom Trading CC, for the three trucks it received from China – seems to be unable to produce proof that Kongom Trading transferred money to the Chinese company to pay for the three lorries.
Mokaxwa and Shanyengana’s predecessor as chairperson of the board of directors of NCH, former Public Service Commissioner Teckla Lameck, are jointly charged with a count of fraud in which they are accused of having defrauded NCH to the tune of US$144 000 (about N$1,02 million) by having inflated the price of trucks which the company imported from China.
The prosecution is alleging that the eight lorries imported by NCH were supposed to cost US$36 000 each, and that Mokaxwa and Lameck inflated that price to US$54 000 per truck. As a result of the increased price paid by NCH, Mokaxwa and Lameck were allegedly able to get hold of an additional four trucks which were imported but not registered in the name of NCH, which is a subsidiary of the Swapo-owned Kalahari Holdings.
Lameck and Mokaxwa have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them.
The charges also include a second count of fraud, in which they and a Chinese national, Yang Fan, are accused of having defrauded the Ministry of Finance with a transaction through which the ministry bought security scanning equipment from a Chinese company at a price of US$53,3 million (about N$477,6 million) in May 2008.
Shanyengana testified that after the NCH board found out through a report by auditing firm BDO Namibia that additional trucks were imported, and that NCH also paid the customs duties levied on three of those lorries, it requested an explanation from Mokaxwa and Lameck.
Mokaxwa provided an explanation at a board meeting on 24 March 2009, Shanyengana said – although he started to doubt the correctness of this date under cross-examination from defence counsel Gerson Hinda.
At that board meeting, Mokaxwa provided the board with proof of payments made from the bank account of Kongom Trading to China FAW, but these payments were of relatively “minuscule amounts” of a few thousand dollars each, Shanyengana said.
He said the board then asked Mokaxwa to provide it with additional proof of payments made to the Chine company for the trucks bought by Kongom Trading.
Shanyengana initially identified a document appearing to be a record of a bank transfer of US$97 481 from the account of Kongom Trading to China FAW’s account as one of the documents which Mokaxwa provided to the board.
Under cross-examination, though, he soon buckled under pressure from Hinda and backtracked on that part of his testimony, saying he could not remember if that document was one of those that Mokaxwa showed to the board.
That document is a fake and is not a record of a real bank transaction, Acting Judge Cheda heard earlier in the trial.
Hinda has told a previous witness that according to Mokaxwa he does not know that document.
Hinda also told Shanyengana that according to Mokaxwa he did not attend an NCH board meeting on 24 March 2009, and that he also did not provide proof of payments to the board at such a meeting. Shanyengana insisted that Mokaxwa indeed provided such documentation to the board, that this could be confirmed by other directors who were at the meeting, and that the documents were not accepted as sufficient explanation on Mokaxwa’s part.
Chief Prosecutor Danie Small is expected to call the prosecution’s fourteenth witness in the trial to testify today.

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