Kandara inquest in legal limbo

THE inquest into the gunshot death of controversial investment manager Lazarus Kandara is still in limbo, almost a year and five months after he died and more than six months after the High Court halted a first inquest into the circumstances of his death.

The 40-year-old Kandara died of a gunshot wound to his chest in front of the entrance to the Windhoek Police station on the evening of August 24 2005. He was being escorted to the Police station, where he was set to be locked up in custody, after he had been allowed to visit his house in Windhoek to collect a change of clothing, medication and other personal items following his arrest on charges of fraud late that afternoon.Kandara had played a key role in an asset management company, Avid Investment Corporation, which early in 2005 netted a N$30 million investment from the Social Security Commission.Avid, of which Kandara was in effect the Chief Executive Officer, was unable to repay the SSC’s investment money at the end of a four-month investment period.This set in motion highly publicised legal proceedings that led to the company being declared bankrupt and prompted the High Court to conduct a politically charged public inquiry into the botched investment deal.Kandara was arrested at the end of his second day of testimony.An inquest that was supposed to determine the circumstances of Kandara’s death started in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on March 20 last year.However, after four days of proceedings in the inquest, during which 12 witnesses had given evidence, four Police officers who had been involved in the arrest and escort of Kandara in the last hours of his life stopped the proceeding in their tracks through an urgent application in which they asked the High Court to remove the presiding Magistrate, Maria Mahalie, from the inquest.They claimed that they harboured apprehensions about Mahalie’s impartiality, because they had received information that she had attended Kandara’s funeral at Otjiwarongo.They also complained that Mahalie had refused to allow their lawyer, Sisa Namandje, to cross-examine witnesses testifying at the inquest on their behalf.The High Court eventually ordered on June 26 last year that Mahalie should have recused herself from presiding over the inquest when Namandje asked for her recusal.The court also ordered that the inquest had to restart before another Magistrate, and indicated that reasons for this order would be provided “in due course”.Those reasons have not yet been given, and this, it now appears, has been preventing a new inquest from being held.The Justice Ministry’s Chief: Lower Courts, Petrus Unengu, told The Namibian yesterday that the inquest remained in the hands of the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court.The Magistrate in charge of that court would have to assign a Magistrate to take over the inquest, which would then have to be held afresh, he said.The Magistrate that the inquest is assigned to would have to decide whether the inquest would be in the form of a public hearing of evidence, or whether the Magistrate would conduct the inquest behind closed doors by studying the documentary evidence that is in the Police docket on the investigation of Kandara’s death and making findings on the matter on the basis of that evidence alone, Unengu said.He added that he would however presume that the inquest has remained suspended because reasons for the High Court’s recusal judgement are still awaited.At the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court, the former Acting Chief Magistrate for the Windhoek District, Johanna Salionga, was dealing with the matter of the Kandara inquest until she took up a new post at the office of the Master of the High Court at the beginning of November last year.She said yesterday that she was still waiting to receive the High Court’s judgement containing the reasons for its decision on the urgent recusal application when she vacated that post at the Magistrate’s Court.According to Salionga’s successor as Acting Chief Magistrate in Windhoek, Desmond Beukes, the Kandara inquest file has not come across his desk since he took over his current post at the beginning of December.He expects that once reasons for the High Court’s recusal judgement are handed down, the inquest file would be returned to his office for the matter to be assigned to a Magistrate, which could be a Regional Court Magistrate this time around, he said yesterday.He was being escorted to the Police station, where he was set to be locked up in custody, after he had been allowed to visit his house in Windhoek to collect a change of clothing, medication and other personal items following his arrest on charges of fraud late that afternoon.Kandara had played a key role in an asset management company, Avid Investment Corporation, which early in 2005 netted a N$30 million investment from the Social Security Commission.Avid, of which Kandara was in effect the Chief Executive Officer, was unable to repay the SSC’s investment money at the end of a four-month investment period.This set in motion highly publicised legal proceedings that led to the company being declared bankrupt and prompted the High Court to conduct a politically charged public inquiry into the botched investment deal.Kandara was arrested at the end of his second day of testimony.An inquest that was supposed to determine the circumstances of Kandara’s death started in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on March 20 last year.However, after four days of proceedings in the inquest, during which 12 witnesses had given evidence, four Police officers who had been involved in the arrest and escort of Kandara in the last hours of his life stopped the proceeding in their tracks through an urgent application in which they asked the High Court to remove the presiding Magistrate, Maria Mahalie, from the inquest.They claimed that they harboured apprehensions about Mahalie’s impartiality, because they had received information that she had attended Kandara’s funeral at Otjiwarongo.They also complained that Mahalie had refused to allow their lawyer, Sisa Namandje, to cross-examine witnesses testifying at the inquest on their behalf. The High Court eventually ordered on June 26 last year that Mahalie should have recused herself from presiding over the inquest when Namandje asked for her recusal.The court also ordered that the inquest had to restart before another Magistrate, and indicated that reasons for this order would be provided “in due course”.Those reasons have not yet been given, and this, it now appears, has been preventing a new inquest from being held.The Justice Ministry’s Chief: Lower Courts, Petrus Unengu, told The Namibian yesterday that the inquest remained in the hands of the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court.The Magistrate in charge of that court would have to assign a Magistrate to take over the inquest, which would then have to be held afresh, he said.The Magistrate that the inquest is assigned to would have to decide whether the inquest would be in the form of a public hearing of evidence, or whether the Magistrate would conduct the inquest behind closed doors by studying the documentary evidence that is in the Police docket on the investigation of Kandara’s death and making findings on the matter on the basis of that evidence alone, Unengu said.He added that he would however presume that the inquest has remained suspended because reasons for the High Court’s recusal judgement are still awaited.At the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court, the former Acting Chief Magistrate for the Windhoek District, Johanna Salionga, was dealing with the matter of the Kandara inquest until she took up a new post at the office of the Master of the High Court at the beginning of November last year.She said yesterday that she was still waiting to receive the High Court’s judgement containing the reasons for its decision on the urgent recusal application when she vacated that post at the Magistrate’s Court.According to Salionga’s successor as Acting Chief Magistrate in Windhoek, Desmond Beukes, the Kandara inquest file has not come across his desk since he took over his current post at the beginning of Dece
mber.He expects that once reasons for the High Court’s recusal judgement are handed down, the inquest file would be returned to his office for the matter to be assigned to a Magistrate, which could be a Regional Court Magistrate this time around, he said yesterday.