Court rules Koch can be extradited

THE High Court has given the green light for the extradition of German fraud suspect Hans Juergen Koch – but the legal battle over Germany’s efforts to prosecute him on massive fraud charges may not be over yet.

A wait of some seven and a half months to hear whether the High Court would allow his appeal against a Tsumeb Magistrate’s Court decision in which he was found extraditable to Germany in September 2003, bore bitter fruit for Koch on Friday. Judges Sylvester Mainga and Kato van Niekerk announced in the High Court in Windhoek that they had agreed that his appeal should be dismissed.Koch, now aged 56, has been held in custody in Namibia since October 14 2002, when he was detained at the request of the German government pending his extradition to Germany.He is wanted on 203 charges of fraud, 12 charges of tax evasion and four counts of falsification of documents.Koch intends to continue fighting efforts to send him back to his country of birth, it was indicated yesterday.His Grootfontein-based attorney, Izak Hohne, told The Namibian that Koch has already instructed his two legal counsels, Louis Botes and Rudi Cohrssen, to start investigating two possible further options by which he might take his opposition to Germany’s extradition request still further through the Namibian legal system.They have been instructed to look into either lodging an appeal against Friday’s High Court decision, or asking for the decision to be reviewed, Hohne said.Either way, it appears that Koch’s case may now be heading to the Supreme Court for a final judgement on his fate in Namibia.He has been resident in Namibia since December 1999.During 1994, he bought a farm in the Tsumeb district, where he has developed a luxurious hunting farm, La Rochelle.Before his arrest, Koch at one stage hosted then President Sam Nujoma at La Rochelle for a hunting excursion.Koch was granted permanent residence in Namibia in October 1997, and was issued with a Namibian travel document on September 25 2002.In a formal written request dated only a week later, the German Ambassador to Namibia asked Namibia’s Justice Minister to have Koch arrested under a German arrest warrant, and to have him returned to Germany to be prosecuted.The charges against him are related to a “borrowing and lending scheme” that Koch set up and operated in Germany between 1987 and 1999, “at the expense of numerous local authorities in Germany”, the Ambassador stated.He informed the Justice Minister: “He (Koch) issued long-term loans on the one hand, funding these loans through other local authorities on the other.”In implementing the scheme, he misled local authorities lending funds into believing that the amounts they were providing were short-term deposit investments.In actual fact, the accused used the sums of money to pay off the long-term loans, as had been his intention from the start.This gave him the opportunity to use the interest and redemption subsequently made into his own bank account for private purposes.”Between 1996 and 1999 alone, Koch funnelled the equivalent of some N$110 million into his own pockets from this scheme, the Ambassador claimed.Koch’s legal team of Cohrssen and Botes attacked the extradition hearing in the Tsumeb Magistrate’s Court on two fronts during the High Court appeal.They argued firstly that the documentation through which Germany’s extradition request was made to Namibia was not properly shown to have been authentic and could thus not be relied on.Secondly, they argued that there had been no factual, admissible evidence before the court to show that Koch had made himself guilty of the offences as alleged.Both grounds of attack have now been dismissed.Judges Mainga and Van Niekerk wrote judgements on Koch’s appeal, and came to the same conclusion.That conclusion is that his appeal is dismissed and the Tsumeb Magistrate’s order that Koch should be detained in prison in Namibia until the Justice Minister has signed an order for his extradition to Germany, remains of full force.With Judge Van Niekerk reported late on Friday afternoon still to be ironing out typographical details in her judgement, only Judge Mainga’s reasons for the court’s decision were available at the weekend.Over the course of close to 60 typewritten pages he set out Koch’s lawyers’ arguments, only to shoot down each one of these.He concluded with some robust remarks on the predicament in which Koch finds himself: protesting his innocence, while at the same time refusing to return to Germany to prove that innocence, by claiming that he is convinced he would not receive a fair trial in Germany.Koch’s conduct spoke louder than his words, Judge Mainga commented.”He is a fugitive from justice, and avoids extradition to Germany by every conceivable means, for example, he is accusing the tax authorities for closing down his business when he was given opportunity in December 1999 and January 2000 to return to Germany long before the business was closed in March 2000,” the Judge stated.”If (Koch) is innocent as he claims he is, he would have returned to Germany not only to clear his good name but to safeguard the lucrative business that generated him millions of Deutschmarks.His reasons for not returning in that he does not trust the tax authorities, the legal system and that the newspapers had already convicted him are unfounded and without merit.Besides the notorious history of the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) it is today a flourishing democracy respecting basic human rights and (Koch’s) right to a fair trial is guaranteed.(Koch’s) opposition to return, is rather the possibility of a conviction whose consequences would be devastating for (Koch), i.e.a long prison sentence.”Public Prosecutor Zenobia Barry successfully steered the extradition request through the Tsumeb lower court.In the High Court, Deputy Prosecutor-General Danie Small opposed the appeal, with similar success, it turned out on Friday.Judges Sylvester Mainga and Kato van Niekerk announced in the High Court in Windhoek that they had agreed that his appeal should be dismissed.Koch, now aged 56, has been held in custody in Namibia since October 14 2002, when he was detained at the request of the German government pending his extradition to Germany.He is wanted on 203 charges of fraud, 12 charges of tax evasion and four counts of falsification of documents.Koch intends to continue fighting efforts to send him back to his country of birth, it was indicated yesterday.His Grootfontein-based attorney, Izak Hohne, told The Namibian that Koch has already instructed his two legal counsels, Louis Botes and Rudi Cohrssen, to start investigating two possible further options by which he might take his opposition to Germany’s extradition request still further through the Namibian legal system.They have been instructed to look into either lodging an appeal against Friday’s High Court decision, or asking for the decision to be reviewed, Hohne said.Either way, it appears that Koch’s case may now be heading to the Supreme Court for a final judgement on his fate in Namibia.He has been resident in Namibia since December 1999.During 1994, he bought a farm in the Tsumeb district, where he has developed a luxurious hunting farm, La Rochelle.Before his arrest, Koch at one stage hosted then President Sam Nujoma at La Rochelle for a hunting excursion. Koch was granted permanent residence in Namibia in October 1997, and was issued with a Namibian travel document on September 25 2002.In a formal written request dated only a week later, the German Ambassador to Namibia asked Namibia’s Justice Minister to have Koch arrested under a German arrest warrant, and to have him returned to Germany to be prosecuted.The charges against him are related to a “borrowing and lending scheme” that Koch set up and operated in Germany between 1987 and 1999, “at the expense of numerous local authorities in Germany”, the Ambassador stated.He informed the Justice Minister: “He (Koch) issued long-term loans on the one hand, funding these loans through other local authorities on the other.”In implementing the scheme, he misled local authorities lending funds into believing that the amounts they were providing were short-term deposit investments.In actual fact, the accused used the sums of money to pay off the long-term loans, as had been his intention from the start.This gave him the opportunity to use the interest and redemption subsequently made into his own bank account for private purposes.”Between 1996 and 1999 alone, Koch funnelled the equivalent of some N$110 million into his own pockets from this scheme, the Ambassador claimed.Koch’s legal team of Cohrssen and Botes attacked the extradition hearing in the Tsumeb Magistrate’s Court on two fronts during the High Court appeal.They argued firstly that the documentation through which Germany’s extradition request was made to Namibia was not properly shown to have been authentic and could thus not be relied on.Secondly, they argued that there had been no factual, admissible evidence before the court to show that Koch had made himself guilty of the offences as alleged.Both grounds of attack have now been dismissed.Judges Mainga and Van Niekerk wrote judgements on Koch’s appeal, and came to the same conclusion.That conclusion is that his appeal is dismissed and the Tsumeb Magistrate’s order that Koch should be detained in prison in Namibia until the Justice Minister has signed an order for his extradition to Germany, remains of full force.With Judge Van Niekerk reported late on Friday afternoon still to be ironing out typographical details in her judgement, only Judge Mainga’s reasons for the court’s decision were available at the weekend.Over the course of close to 60 typewritten pages he set out Koch’s lawyers’ arguments, only to shoot down each one of these.He concluded with some robust remarks on the predicament in which Koch finds himself: protesting his innocence, while at the same time refusing to return to Germany to prove that innocence, by claiming that he is convinced he would not receive a fair trial in Germany.Koch’s conduct spoke louder than his words, Judge Mainga commented.”He is a fugitive from justice, and avoids extradition to Germany by every conceivable means, for example, he is accusing the tax authorities for closing down his business when he was given opportunity in December 1999 and January 2000 to return to Germany long before the business was closed in March 2000,” the Judge stated.”If (Koch) is innocent as he claims he is, he would have returned to Germany not only to clear his good name but to safeguard the lucrative business that generated him millions of Deutschmarks.His reasons for not returning in that he does not trust the tax authorities, the legal system and that the newspapers had already convicted him are unfounded and without merit.Besides the notorious history of the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) it is today a flourishing democracy respecting basic human rights and (Koch’s) right to a fair trial is guaranteed.(Koch’s) opposition to return, is rather the possibility of a conviction whose consequences would be devastating for (Koch), i.e.a long prison sentence.”Public Prosecutor Zenobia Barry successfully steered the extradition request through the Tsumeb lower court.In the High Court, Deputy Prosecutor-General Danie Small opposed the appeal, with similar success, it turned out on Friday.