Blaauw quits NYC post

THE Acting Secretary General of the National Youth Council, Ralph Blaauw, is resigning from his post as a result of the messy collapse of the N$30 million Social Security Commission investment deal with Avid Investment Corporation.

Blaauw called a small group of reporters to his house in Windhoek yesterday afternoon to announce that he has decided to resign as NYC Secretary General, a post that he had held since May. “After consultations and really thinking this thing through, I’ve decided that I’ll call it quits,” Blaauw announced.He said that “because of everything that happened” in connection with the SSC’s ill-fated investment of N$30 million through Avid, he was feeling that an atmosphere of mistrust had arisen, and that it was better for him to step down.He said he had been elected to the post by people who trusted him, and felt that stepping down while the High Court’s inquiry into the investment deal was going on would be the honourable thing to do now.Blaauw brushed off suggestions that he had been pressurised into resigning.”Nobody asked me to make this move,” he stated.”If anybody tells you they pressured me, you tell them Ralph says they are lying,” he said.But while denying that he had been put under pressure to resign, Blaauw also indicated that he could sense that a measure of suspicion and mistrust of him had grown as a result of the Avid inquiry, and that this motivated his decision to quit.Blaauw’s resignation follows less than a week after his Swapo Party Youth League colleague, Paulus Kapia, resigned from his post as Deputy Minister of Works, Transport and Communication, also as a direct result of the SSC-Avid investment scandal.Like Blaauw’s wife, lawyer Sharon Blaauw, Kapia had also been a director of Avid at the time that the company managed to persuade the SSC to invest N$30 million with it.Avid’s inability to repay the investment at the due date near the end of May has since led to the young company being placed in provisional liquidation by the High Court and to the court embarking on a Companies Act inquiry into the deal, amid unprecedented public attention.The fallout from the souring of the investment has included not only Kapia’s resignation, but also the suspension of SSC Chief Executive Officer Tuli Hiveluah and SSC General Manager: Finance and Administration Avril Green from their posts.As the inquiry unfolded, Blaauw’s name has been cropping up repeatedly in evidence heard by Acting Judge Raymond Heathcote.At various stages of the inquiry the court was told that Blaauw had actively tried to assist Avid in getting off the ground, that he had hooked up Avid Chief Executive Officer Lazarus Kandara with Kapia, and that both Blaauw and Kapia, as well as two fellow former Avid directors, lawyer Otniel Podewiltz and retired Brigadier Mathias Shiweda, had received cash payments of tens of thousands of Namibia dollars from Kandara.Before his claimed suicide a week ago, Kandara told the court that Blaauw had received N$80 000 in total from him, while Kapia and Shiweda had received N$40 000 each and Podewiltz had been given around N$49 000 by him.That money was not connected to the SSC investment deal, however, but came from the proceeds that Avid had received on a previous investment, Kandara claimed.Kandara also said that he had initially wanted Blaauw to serve on the board of Avid – a company that Kandara created early last year – but that Blaauw had suggested that his wife should be on the board instead.Thereafter Blaauw effectively continued to act as director of Avid, Kandara claimed.Blaauw said yesterday that he would return to the inquiry – which is scheduled to resume on Wednesday next week – to state his side of the matter and to clear his name.In the meantime, he flatly denied having received any money from Kandara, or that his wife had been on Avid’s board of directors to merely serve as a front for him.”I never received one cent, really,” he stated.He acknowledged that he had taken an active interest in Avid, but said that he had done so simply because he thought the establishment of a new investment management company was a good idea and wanted to help it where he could.He said he had been under the impression that his wife had been asked to serve on the board as “a young professional”.Mrs Blaauw herself told the inquiry that while she was a director in her own right, and not on behalf of anyone else, she was so occupied with other work last year and earlier this year that she never actually gave any attention to Avid’s affairs, never attended any board meetings, and did not at all know what was going on inside the company.Blaauw said yesterday the explanation that he was given about Avid was that it would be placing investments with an established South African investment company, Sasfin, and that Alan Rosenberg, a financial trader who has turned out to have received N$20 million of the SSC’s money to invest, was connected to Sasfin.Claims of Sasfin’s role in Avid’s plans and Rosenberg’s supposed involvement with Sasfin have all since turned out not to have been the truth.Blaauw remarked: “That’s what we believed in.I wish we had known better.”He said he and Kandara had been acquaintances, but definitely not friends.He also said he had spoken to Kapia “as Kapia” – and apparently not in the latter’s capacity as Swapo Party Youth League Secretary – in connection with Avid.Kapia later went on to speak to somebody at Avid about the possibility of getting shares in the company for the Youth League – which was something that was in the end never finalised, Blaauw added – and he believed this was something that Kapia had meant well with, Blaauw said.”I do not believe that this Avid was established to get into this situation it finds itself in,” he stated.”It wasn’t created to steal or to rob.”He said he would be relinquishing his post after the NYC’s National Executive Committee, which he already informed yesterday of his decision to quit, has met again on September 10.He will be remaining active in politics, though, Blaauw added: “I’m a politician till I die, because I was created for a specific reason.”When asked what he would be doing in the immediate future, though, Blaauw was coy, only saying that he had business ventures to which he would return, and stating: “I’m going somewhere.You’ll hear very soon.”The 34-year-old Blaauw was chosen as Acting Secretary General of the NYC by the organisation’s Representative Council in May.He filled the post that had been left vacant after former NYC Secretary General Pohamba Shifeta was elected to the National Assembly and appointed as Deputy Minister of Youth, National Youth Service, Sport and Culture.Blaauw had himself served in the National Assembly from October last year, when he filled the seat that was left vacant by the resignation of former Deputy Finance Minister Rick Kukuri from Parliament, until March 20.”After consultations and really thinking this thing through, I’ve decided that I’ll call it quits,” Blaauw announced.He said that “because of everything that happened” in connection with the SSC’s ill-fated investment of N$30 million through Avid, he was feeling that an atmosphere of mistrust had arisen, and that it was better for him to step down.He said he had been elected to the post by people who trusted him, and felt that stepping down while the High Court’s inquiry into the investment deal was going on would be the honourable thing to do now.Blaauw brushed off suggestions that he had been pressurised into resigning.”Nobody asked me to make this move,” he stated.”If anybody tells you they pressured me, you tell them Ralph says they are lying,” he said.But while denying that he had been put under pressure to resign, Blaauw also indicated that he could sense that a measure of suspicion and mistrust of him had grown as a result of the Avid inquiry, and that this motivated his decision to quit.Blaauw’s resignation follows less than a week after his Swapo Party Youth League colleague, Paulus Kapia, resigned from his post as Deputy Minister of Works, Transport and Communication, also as a direct result of the SSC-Avid investment scandal.Like Blaauw’s wife, lawyer Sharon Blaauw, Kapia had also been a director of Avid at the time that the company managed to persuade the SSC to invest N$30 million with it. Avid’s inability to repay the investment at the due date near the end of May has since led to the young company being placed in provisional liquidation by the High Court and to the court embarking on a Companies Act inquiry into the deal, amid unprecedented public attention.The fallout from the souring of the investment has included not only Kapia’s resignation, but also the suspension of SSC Chief Executive Officer Tuli Hiveluah and SSC General Manager: Finance and Administration Avril Green from their posts.As the inquiry unfolded, Blaauw’s name has been cropping up repeatedly in evidence heard by Acting Judge Raymond Heathcote.At various stages of the inquiry the court was told that Blaauw had actively tried to assist Avid in getting off the ground, that he had hooked up Avid Chief Executive Officer Lazarus Kandara with Kapia, and that both Blaauw and Kapia, as well as two fellow former Avid directors, lawyer Otniel Podewiltz and retired Brigadier Mathias Shiweda, had received cash payments of tens of thousands of Namibia dollars from Kandara.Before his claimed suicide a week ago, Kandara told the court that Blaauw had received N$80 000 in total from him, while Kapia and Shiweda had received N$40 000 each and Podewiltz had been given around N$49 000 by him.That money was not connected to the SSC investment deal, however, but came from the proceeds that Avid had received on a previous investment, Kandara claimed.Kandara also said that he had initially wanted Blaauw to serve on the board of Avid – a company that Kandara created early last year – but that Blaauw had suggested that his wife should be on the board instead.Thereafter Blaauw effectively continued to act as director of Avid, Kandara claimed.Blaauw said yesterday that he would return to the inquiry – which is scheduled to resume on Wednesday next week – to state his side of the matter and to clear his name.In the meantime, he flatly denied having received any money from Kandara, or that his wife had been on Avid’s board of directors to merely serve as a front for him.”I never received one cent, really,” he stated.He acknowledged that he had taken an active interest in Avid, but said that he had done so simply because he thought the establishment of a new investment management company was a good idea and wanted to help it where he could.He said he had been under the impression that his wife had been asked to serve on the board as “a young professional”.Mrs Blaauw herself told the inquiry that while she was a director in her own right, and not on behalf of anyone else, she was so occupied with other work last year and earlier this year that she never actually gave any attention to Avid’s affairs, never attended any board meetings, and did not at all know what was going on inside the company.Blaauw said yesterday the explanation that he was given about Avid was that it would be placing investments with an established South African investment company, Sasfin, and that Alan Rosenberg, a financial trader who has turned out to have received N$20 million of the SSC’s money to invest, was connected to Sasfin.Claims of Sasfin’s role in Avid’s plans and Rosenberg’s supposed involvement with Sasfin have all since turned out not to have been the truth.Blaauw remarked: “That’s what we believed in.I wish we had known better.”He said he and Kandara had been acquaintances, but definitely not friends.He also said he had spoken to Kapia “as Kapia” – and apparently not in the latter’s capacity as Swapo Party Youth League Secretary – in connection with Avid.Kapia later went on to speak to somebody at Avid about the possibility of getting shares in the company for the Youth League – which was something that was in the end never finalised, Blaauw added – and he believed this was something that Kapia had meant well with, Blaauw said.”I do not believe that this Avid was established to get into this situation it finds itself in,” he stated.”It wasn’t created to steal or to rob.”He said he would be relinquishing his post after the NYC’s National Executive Committee, which he already informed yesterday of his decision to quit, has met again on September 10.He will be remaining active in politics, though, Blaauw added: “I’m a politician till I die, because I was created for a specific reason.”When asked what he would be doing in the immediate future, though, Blaauw was coy, only saying that he had business ventures to which he would return, and stating: “I’m going somewhere.You’ll hear very soon.”The 34-year-old Blaauw was chosen as Acting Secretary General of the NYC by the organisation’s Representative Council in May.He filled the post that had been left vacant after former NYC Secretary General Pohamba Shifeta was elected to the National Assembly and appointed as Deputy Minister of Youth, National Youth Service, Sport and Culture.Blaauw had himself served in the National Assembly from October last year, when he filled the seat that was left vacant by the resignation of former Deputy Finance Minister Rick Kukuri from Parliament, until March 20.