A FORMER Swakopmund estate agent is in police custody after he was found guilty of fraud and money laundering over financial dealings he had with a Congolese army general 10 years ago.
Acting judge Eileen Rakow acquitted Erwin Sprangers on a charge of fraud, but convicted him on five counts of theft by conversion, involving an amount of N$6,7 million, and a charge of money laundering in the Windhoek High Court on Friday.
After delivering her verdict, Rakow revoked Sprangers’ bail and ordered that he should be kept in custody until he is scheduled to return to court on 25 September for a presentence hearing.
In her judgement, Rakow rejected the version Sprangers placed before the court in his own defence, commenting that she had found it not to be reasonably and possibly true.
She also said she was not satisfied that the evidence showed Sprangers had the intention to defraud Democratic Republic of Congo army general François Olenga, but found that Sprangers took money which Olenga had paid into an account of his estate agency at Swakopmund in February, March and July 2010 for his own use.
Sprangers and his former wife, Heidi Sprangers, were initially jointly charged, but she was found not guilty in November last year, after the state closed its case in their trial.
During the trial, Olenga testified that he had an amount of US$900 000 – then the equivalent of about N$6,7 million – paid into a bank account of Sprangers’ estate agency, and that this money was meant to be used to develop two properties he had bought at Swakopmund in 2003.
He said he trusted Sprangers since he had done business with him for six years without problems.
He also told the court Sprangers later started avoiding contact with him, and that when he demanded the return of his money, Sprangers repaid him only US$50 000.According to Sprangers, though, the US$50 000 which he paid Olenga was a commission for the role the general had played in finding a buyer for an antique Chinese vase Sprangers said his sister had given to him in the 1980s.
Sprangers told the court Olenga found an anonymous buyer who was offering to purchase the vase for US$1,25 million.
After he had received US$900 000 of that purchase price, two Chinese men came to pick up the vase from him around July 2010, Sprangers also said.
Rakow noted in her judgement that, while Sprangers gave a detailed description of the vase he said he had sold, he did not provide the court with any record of the existence of the antique.
She also noted that, according to his version, he handed the vase over to two unknown Chinese men, while an amount of US$350 000 was still outstanding on the purchase price.
That version, she concluded, was not reasonably or possibly true.
Olenga also sued Sprangers in a civil case in the High Court.
The general won that case in June last year, when Sprangers was ordered to pay the equivalent of an amount of US$850 000 in Namibia dollars to Olenga.
Defence counsel Jan Wessels is representing Sprangers in the criminal trial. State advocate Erick Moyo is prosecuting.
