SHINOVENE IMMANUEL, LAZARUS AMUKESHE and WERNER MENGESTWO Namibian companies implicated in the Fishrot scandal transferred close to N$100 million to prominent financial investment firms in the past six years.
The investment companies are IJG Securities (N$61 million), PointBreak (N$23 million) and Investec Asset Management Namibia (N$10 million).
These details are contained in court papers filed this month by the Anti-Corruption Commission as part of the bail hearing of former fisheries minister Bernhard Esau and his son-in-law Tamson ‘Fitty’ Hatuikulipi.
The ACC filed a document that maps out the flow of close to N$200 million between 2014 to 2019 from two entities co-owned by lawyer Marén de Klerk.
De Klerk is currently in South Africa and is accused of allegedly operating a scheme to launder money to president Hage Geingob’s Swapo campaigns, politicians, business people and their cronies.
De Klerk allegedly did this through entities he controlled, such as Celax Investment and law firm DHC Inc he co-owns with Stoan Horn and Celeste Coetzee.
The Fishrot scandal has since last year focused on how law firms were used to channel money — including public funds — to politicians and a clique of business people.
Banks and investment companies have largely remained under the radar of scrutiny.
Now, court papers show Fishrot funds were paid through investment companies.
In some cases, money was transferred into investment companies just to be returned a month later to Celax Investment — the company accused of benefiting from N$75 million diverted from the national fishing company Fishcor.
De Klerk who also served as former justice minister Sacky Shanghala’s lawyer, played a key role in the transfer of these funds.
Besides owning the law firm DHC and Celax Investments, he also served on the board of Seaflower Pelagic, a joint venture between Fishcor and African Selection Fishing Namibia.
Seaflower Pelagic Processing and Celax Investments were used as a conduit for money laundering, court charges allege. Celax Investments is co-owned by South African businessman Adriaan Jacobus Louw.
The largest beneficiary from the N$100 million paid by Celax Investments and DHC Inc was IJG Securities, court documents show.
The two entities paid N$61 million to IJG between 2014 and 2019. Part of this was returned to the two Fishrot accused companies.
According to sources, part of these transactions includes N$14 million paid into De Klerk’s firm in August 2017 by a Samherji Namibian subsidiary called Mermaria.
That amount was then moved from DHC Inc to Celax Investments the following day.
That same day, it was moved out of Celax Investments to IJG in three payments. This was done on Saturday, 5 August 2017.
Five days later, IJG Securities transferred N$7,4 million to Celax Investments.
Celax then further distributed N$7,4 million to JHT Trading – owned by Tamson Hatuikulipi (N$3 million) and N$4,4 million back into DHC Inc’s trust account.
IJG Securities is an investment company and is a registered broker with the Namibian Stock Exchange and mainly deals in investments on the premier exchange, as well as the buying and selling of government bonds and treasury bills – or what is known as fixed income trading.
Detailed questions sent to IJG’s managing director Mark Späth were not answered.
The Namibian asked IJG to explain the relationship between them and De Klerk’s companies.
The newspaper also asked whether they checked the legitimacy of the funds they received from the two entities.
Pointbreak, which is owned by FNB Namibia, allegedly received around N$23 million in six years. The company paid back around N$16 million to DHC Inc.
Questions sent to Pointbreak Group chief executive officer Josephat Mwatotele were not answered. FNB promised to facilitate answers, but did not.
The company did not state whether the N$7 million is still with them and what steps they took to ensure funds were not contaminated.
