A married couple accused of running a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment scheme has denied guilt on 64 charges on which they were arrested in March last year.
The couple, Coenraad Botha and Charlotte Murove, pleaded not guilty to all the charges they are facing during an appearance before magistrate Monica Andjaba in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
Botha and Murove did not give the court any plea explanation.
They are charged with a count of fraud involving an amount of N$163 million, 31 counts of conducting a banking business without authorisation, 31 charges of money laundering, and a count of conducting a Ponzi scheme, which is a contravention of the Banking Institutions Act of 1998.
The state is alleging that Botha and Murove defrauded investors from 2018 to 2022 by creating the impression that they were operating a legitimate business and were authorised to receive investments from members of the public, while in truth they were not authorised to receive any deposit or investment.
In the fraud charge faced by the couple, the state is alleging that they received a sum of N$163 million as a result of the investment scheme they ran through the entity CBI Exchange Namibia.
Botha testified during a bail hearing in March last year that CBI Exchange Namibia was started in 2021, after a similar cryptocurrency investment scheme that he ran in South Africa under the name CBI X SA had been closed down.
According to Botha, CBI Exchange Namibia traded in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, and investors could buy and sell cryptocurrencies through it.
According to South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), Botha, through CBI X SA, solicited investments from members of the public in South Africa by promising unrealistic returns of 1% to 4% per week on invested funds.
An investigation by the FSCA “disclosed that there was no legitimate financial product or investment activity that generated the purported returns paid to the investors by Botha and CBI entities,” the FSCA stated in a press release in March last year.
The FSCA found that Botha, CBI X SA and CBI Association contravened a section of South Africa’s Banks Act of 1990, and imposed an administrative penalty of N$216 million on Botha, but in October last year decided to set aside that finding and the penalty and to refer the matter back to the FSCA “for further consideration”.
Botha and Murove were granted bail in an amount of N$50 000 and N$30 000, respectively, in April last year, nearly six weeks after their arrests.
They have to appear in court again on 3
0 April.
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