FIVE of the seven people prosecuted in connection with an investment swindle that cost the Social Security Commission about N$20 million in 2005 were found guilty in the Windhoek High Court this morning.
Delivering his judgement in a trial that started before him near the end of May 2014 and a case that first shot to public attention in July 2005, judge Christie Liebenberg found former Swapo Party Youth League leader, National Assembly member and deputy minister Paulus Kapia, fellow former MP Ralph Blaauw, and accountant Inez /Gâses guilty of fraud. That charge flowed from the role they played to persuade managers of the Social Security Commission to invest N$30 million with the asset management company Avid Investment Corporation in early 2005.
They were found not guilty on a charge of reckless or fraudulent conduct of business, with judge Liebenberg remarking that the second charge was a duplication of the count of fraud on which he convicted them.
Nico Josea, the sole shareholder of the company Namangol Investments, which received N$29,5 million from a bank account of Avid after the SSC’s N$30 million had been transferred to that account, was found guilty of theft by conversion and reckless or fraudulent conduct of business.
Lawyer Sharon Blaauw, who was one of the directors of Avid at the time that the company clinched the investment deal with the SSC, was acquitted of fraud, but found guilty of reckless conduct of business. She signed a couple of Avid board resolutions without making sure of the correctness of those documents, which were then presented to the SSC to put it at ease about the safety of the investment it made through Avid, judge Liebenberg found.
Two of the seven accused who had been standing trial before judge Liebenberg were acquitted. Lawyer Otniel Podewiltz, who was a director of Avid but resigned from that position in November 2014, was found not guilty of fraud and reckless or fraudulent conduct of business. Retired Namibian Defence Force brigadier Mathias Shiweda, who was portrayed as a shareholder of Avid at the time that efforts were made to persuade the parastatal’s management to invest money with Avid, was acquitted of reckless or fraudulent conduct of business. Shiweda was found not guilty of fraud in August 2015 already, in a ruling that judge Liebenberg gave after the end of the state’s case.
Judge Liebenberg said the evidence left him with no doubt that the founder of Avid, the late Lazarus Kandara, concocted a scheme to swindle the SSC out of its money, and that Josea and a South African supposed investment broker, Alan Rosenberg, had been in cahoots with Kandara all along.
He rejected Josea’s claims that he did not know the N$29,5 million paid from an account of Avid to an account of Namangol Investments had originated from the SSC, and found there was overwhelming evidence that showed Josea knew, during his dealings with Kandara and Rosenberg, that the money the SSC invested with Avid had subsequently been stolen. Josea was a co-perpetrator in the theft from the beginning, judge Liebenberg found.
In respect of Kapia, /Gâses and Blaauw, he found that, in an effort to persuade the SSC management to invest money with Avid, they made misrepresentations to the SSC – on issues like who the shareholders of Avid were and how an investment of the parastatal with Avid was to be handled and safeguarded – while knowing that those representations were false. However, the evidence did not show that they knew there was a plan to steal the SSC’s money once it had been transferred to an account of Avid, the judge also found.
The evidence before him indicated that the SSC lost about N$20 million out of its investment of N$30 million, judge Liebenberg noted in his judgement.
Josea’s bail was cancelled after he was pronounced guilty, and judge Liebenberg ordered that he should now be kept in custody at Windhoek Correctional Facility.
Commenting that the position of Kapia, /Gâses and the Blaauws with regard to the role they played in the offences that were committed was completely different from that of Josea, judge Liebenberg ordered that they could remain free on bail.
The five have to return to court on 16 May, to have a date set for their presentence hearing.
