PROMINENT Namibian middleman Knowledge Katti is part of a business web of politically well-connected individuals in several African countries who are in partnership with the corruption-accused Uruguayan businessman Gaston Savoi.
AmaBhungane learned this week that Savoi’s Ugandan operation is headed by Eureka Karuhanga, a member of a well-known family close to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni.
Revelations of Savoi’s ties with prominent individuals like Katti and Karuhanga come about four years after the Uruguayan businessman was charged for giving kickbacks and using strategically placed officials in South Africa to win tenders, charges he rejects.
He and several South African businesspeople, including three former provincial ministers, are entangled in corruption trials spanning two provinces, allegedly involving more than R144 million.
The State’s case against Savoi and others paints a picture of an organised crime ring where tenders were used as a mechanism with which to pry funds from the State for the personal benefit of the accused.
Money allegedly changed hands through a number of front companies, and Savoi admitted giving the ANC a donation of R1 million, although he said there was nothing wrong in doing so.
Savoi allegedly worked with ANC heavyweight and provincial minister John Block in South Africa’s Northern Cape province, where the two men are facing corruption charges, and with former provincial ministers Peggy Nkonyeni and Mike Mabuyakhulu in KwaZulu-Natal.
Corruption, money-laundering and racketeering charges against Nkonyeni and Mabuyakhulu were controversially dropped, but remain in force against Savoi and others. Savoy has denied all the charges through his South African lawyer.
Savoi’s South African operation, Intaka Tech, has a 74% stake in Intaka Technology Namibia. In 2011 the latter won a R55-million contract to supply 32 Namibian government hospitals with life-saving oxygen and medical air.
His representative in Namibia is the flamboyant businessman and philanthropist Katti, a friend of Prime Minister Hage Geingob, who refuted claims last month that he is being controlled by businessmen close to him.
Asked whether it was Savoi’s modus operandi to make use of politically plugged-in individuals to get tenders, his lawyer, Michael Gradidge, said: “We don’t handpick politically connected people. We choose our business partners with regard to a number of important factors, including financial factors, ability, skills, drive and business fit.”
“We do not become business partners with those people in every instance. There are a number of variables involved, some of which are beyond our control,” he said.
Gradidge said Savoi had met Katti “through common friends and business associates. He was impressed by his drive, ambition and business acumen and identified him as a business partner in Namibia”.
Katti could not be reached on the phone this week. AmaBhungane emailed questions to him on Tuesday, but had not received a reply by the time of printing.
Intaka Technology Namibia won the five-year contract renewal in 2011 after supplying medical gas to the Namibian health ministry since 2007.
The contract renewal was challenged in court by rival bidders Air Liquide South Africa and Oshimoko Medical Air and Oxygen Supplies, which argued that Intaka had been allowed to present its case to the health ministry while they had been denied such an opportunity, despite official promises.
The application was rejected with costs and Intaka still supplies gas to the hospitals in Namibia.
Intaka Technology Namibia was also mentioned in two major investigations into Namibia’s public health system.
A WHO investigation in 2010 found that suppliers – which included Intaka – “failed to consistently deliver these medical gas products [to State hospitals] at the specified and agreed quality and standard and the Ministry of Health and Social Services also failed to demand that quality”.
A 2013 presidential commission of inquiry into Namibia’s public health system reported that health workers at the Swakopmund Hospital “expressed concern about the oxygen supply which they said was not reliable” and said that the supplier, Intaka, lacked the technical staff or an office in the regions to safeguard the supply. This had led to the cancellation and transfer of scheduled theatre cases.
Responding this week, Gradidge said very few of the shortcomings identified by the WHO related to Intaka.
He said the United Nations agency had also found that there had been no adverse health outcomes resulting from the clinical use of the oxygen-enriched air in State hospitals.
Articles in the Namibian press regarding the oxygen supply in hospitals were “sensationalist and defamatory”, Gradidge said, as the journalists had failed to take account of the poor condition of the gas piping infrastructure and rolling power blackouts that were plaguing the country at the time.
He said gas generating systems installed by Savoi’s operations in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique and Angola were “operating reliably and without incident”.
INTAKA UGANDA
Savoi’s Ugandan operation, Intaka Tech Uganda, is headed by Eureka Karuhanga, the millionaire daughter of a former Ugandan parliamentarian and associate of president Yoweri Museveni.
Elly Karuhanga formerly represented the Nyabushozi constituency for Museveni’s ruling party, which includes Museveni’s rural hometown of Rwakitura. Museveni attended Eureka’s wedding in 2008.
Until December 2013, Elly Karuhanga served as chairperson of Tullow Oil, an Irish oil firm at the centre of Uganda’s oil exploration since 2004.
