Key witness put through the wringer in copper fraud trial

A KEY prosecution witness in the Telecom Namibia scrap copper corruption trial is set to face a fifth day of cross-examination when the trial continues in the High Court in Windhoek today.

Having endured five days of defence lawyer Willie Vermeulen, SC, dissecting and whittling down the testimony he has been giving before Judge Collins Parker since Monday last week, former Telecom Namibia Procurement Manager Ivan Ganes can expect to be in for more of the same painstaking questioning. Ganes is giving evidence in the trial of a former colleague of his at Telecom Namibia, James Camm, and businessmen Ettienne Weakley and Heinz Dresselhaus, whose scrap dealership, Dresselhaus Scrap CC, had a deal with Telecom Namibia in terms of which it bought all the telecommunications parastatal’s scrap copper from mid-1997 to mid-2001.The three charged men, who are denying guilt, are on trial on 30 counts of corruption, fraud and theft, including 13 counts of fraud that are identical to charges to which Ganes pleaded guilty in the High Court in May 2005.The charges are all based on allegations that Weakley, Dresselhaus, Camm and Ganes had been jointly involved in a fraudulent scheme in which the operation of Dresselhaus Scrap’s copper sales agreement with Telecom Namibia was manipulated in such a way that Dresselhaus Scrap was allowed to pay incorrect, lower prices for copper bought from Telecom Namibia.The four alleged participants in turn shared the proceeds that were realised through the operation of this alleged scheme, the prosecution is claiming.According to a plea explanation from Weakley that was submitted to Judge Parker at the start of the trial, the initial agreement that was concluded between Telecom Namibia and Dresselhaus Scrap in October 1997 did not provide for a situation where Dresselhaus Scrap was required to also dismantle redundant phone lines in order to collect scrap copper wire from Telecom Namibia.To provide for such a scenario where Dresselhaus Scrap also had to dismantle old phone lines, further agreements were reached with Telecom Namibia in terms of which Dresselhaus Scrap was allowed to charge Telecom for labour costs at a rate of N$2 200 per ton of copper where lines had been dismantled by it, Weakley has stated in his plea.Between May and July 2000 it was also agreed with Telecom Namibia that the price that Dresselhaus Scrap would pay for copper that it bought from Telecom Namibia would be 70 per cent of the prevailing London Metal Exchange copper price, and no longer 80 per cent, as had been agreed in the contract in October 1997, Weakley also stated.He denied that these agreements with Telecom Namibia were in any manner part of a fraudulent scheme.This had also been Ganes’s version initially, when he was first put through a disciplinary hearing at Telecom Namibia in early 2001 and while he fought legal proceedings in which Telecom Namibia had his estate sequestrated in South Africa thereafter, Ganes has conceded under cross-examination from Vermeulen.While he had stated at his disciplinary hearing and in the bankruptcy proceedings against him in South Africa that alterations to the copper sales agreement with Dresselhaus Scrap were made with the knowledge and approval of Telecom Namibia, this was only part of the truth, Ganes has now told the court.He still believes that Dresselhaus Scrap was entitled to be paid for removal costs where it had to dismantle old phone lines for Telecom Namibia, but the extent to which Dresselhaus ended up being compensated by Telecom Namibia for this, was exactly one of the pillars of the fraud scheme that he was part of, according to Ganes.Telecom Namibia calculated that it would cost the parastatal some N$3 000 per ton of copper if it had to dismantle and remove the redundant phone lines itself, Ganes told Judge Parker.He said Dresselhaus Scrap calculated that it could do this job for about N$1 500 a ton of copper, and the agreement that he and his alleged co-conspirators then reached, was that Dresselhaus Scrap would be paid N$2 200 per ton of copper dismantled and removed.Ganes claimed that the difference of N$700 per ton between the price paid to Dresselhaus Scrap and its actual removal costs was shared in equal parts by him, Camm, Weakley and Mr Dresselhaus.On this version, and according to calculations done by the defence team of Dresselhaus and Weakley, though, the four participants in the scheme would have earned a mere N$9 605 each through the fraud that they were supposedly committing between July 1997 and March 2000 – something that he finds inexplicable, Vermeulen told Ganes yesterday.Ganes agreed that this seemed inexplicable, but added that another pillar of the alleged scheme was that Dresselhaus Scrap would simply not at all be required to pay for some old phone lines that it had removed.Ganes could however not say how many of these lines there had been, or what the value of these would have been.His explanation was that the nature of the scheme was such that he tried not to keep documentary records of phone lines that were made to “disappear” as part of the alleged fraud.After he had been suspended from his post when his seniors at Telecom Namibia finally started suspecting him of malfeasance in early 2001, he visited Weakley at the latter’s office in Windhoek one evening, Ganes also told the court.He said he and Weakley discussed what had happened in terms of his suspension, and they destroyed “a whole lot of documents” by burning them that evening.Ganes added that he presumed these documents would have been incriminating evidence.Weakley will deny that this ever happened, Vermeulen told Ganes yesterday.”My Lord, I stand by my statement,” Ganes replied.Ganes is giving evidence in the trial of a former colleague of his at Telecom Namibia, James Camm, and businessmen Ettienne Weakley and Heinz Dresselhaus, whose scrap dealership, Dresselhaus Scrap CC, had a deal with Telecom Namibia in terms of which it bought all the telecommunications parastatal’s scrap copper from mid-1997 to mid-2001.The three charged men, who are denying guilt, are on trial on 30 counts of corruption, fraud and theft, including 13 counts of fraud that are identical to charges to which Ganes pleaded guilty in the High Court in May 2005.The charges are all based on allegations that Weakley, Dresselhaus, Camm and Ganes had been jointly involved in a fraudulent scheme in which the operation of Dresselhaus Scrap’s copper sales agreement with Telecom Namibia was manipulated in such a way that Dresselhaus Scrap was allowed to pay incorrect, lower prices for copper bought from Telecom Namibia.The four alleged participants in turn shared the proceeds that were realised through the operation of this alleged scheme, the prosecution is claiming.According to a plea explanation from Weakley that was submitted to Judge Parker at the start of the trial, the initial agreement that was concluded between Telecom Namibia and Dresselhaus Scrap in October 1997 did not provide for a situation where Dresselhaus Scrap was required to also dismantle redundant phone lines in order to collect scrap copper wire from Telecom Namibia.To provide for such a scenario where Dresselhaus Scrap also had to dismantle old phone lines, further agreements were reached with Telecom Namibia in terms of which Dresselhaus Scrap was allowed to charge Telecom for labour costs at a rate of N$2 200 per ton of copper where lines had been dismantled by it, Weakley has stated in his plea.Between May and July 2000 it was also agreed with Telecom Namibia that the price that Dresselhaus Scrap would pay for copper that it bought from Telecom Namibia would be 70 per cent of the prevailing London Metal Exchange copper price, and no longer 80 per cent, as had been agreed in the contract in October 1997, Weakley also stated.He denied that these agreements with Telecom Namibia were in any manner part of a fraudulent scheme.This had also been Ganes’s version initially, when he was first put through a disciplinary hearing at Telecom Namibia in early 2001 and while he fought legal proceedings in which Telecom Namibia had his estate sequestrated in South Africa thereafter, Ganes has conceded under cross-examination from Vermeulen.While he had stated at his disciplinary hearing and in the bankruptcy proceedings against him in South Africa that alterations to the copper sales agreement with Dresselhaus Scrap were made with the knowledge and approval of Telecom Namibia, this was only part of the truth, Ganes has now told the court.He still believes that Dresselhaus Scrap was entitled to be paid for removal costs where it had to dismantle old phone lines for Telecom Namibia, but the extent to which Dresselhaus ended up being compensated by Telecom Namibia for this, was exactly one of the pillars of the fraud scheme that he was part of, according to Ganes.Telecom Namibia calculated that it would cost the parastatal some N$3 000 per ton of copper if it had to dismantle and remove the redundant phone lines itself, Ganes told Judge Parker.He said Dresselhaus Scrap calculated that it could do this job for about N$1 500 a ton of copper, and the agreement that he and his alleged co-conspirators then reached, was that Dresselhaus Scrap would be paid N$2 200 per ton of copper dismantled and removed.Ganes claimed that the difference of N$700 per ton between the price paid to Dresselhaus Scrap and its actual removal costs was shared in equal parts by him, Camm, Weakley and Mr Dresselhaus.On this version, and according to calculations done by the defence team of Dresselhaus and Weakley, though, the four participants in the scheme would have earned a mere N$9 605 each through the fraud that they were supposedly committing between July 1997 and March 2000 – something that he finds inexplicable, Vermeulen told Ganes yesterday.Ganes agreed that this seemed inexplicable, but added that another pillar of the alleged scheme was that Dresselhaus Scrap would simply not at all be required to pay for some old phone lines that it had removed.Ganes could however not say how many of these lines there had been, or what the value of these would have been.His explanation was that the nature of the scheme was such that he tried not to keep documentary records of phone lines that were made to “disappear” as part of the alleged fraud.After he had been suspended from his post when his seniors at Telecom Namibia finally started suspecting him of malfeasance in early 2001, he visited Weakley at the latter’s office in Windhoek one evening, Ganes also told the court.He said he and Weakley discussed what had happened in terms of his suspension, and they destroyed “a whole lot of documents” by burning them that evening.Ganes added that he presumed these documents would have been incriminating evidence.Weakley will deny that this ever happened, Vermeulen told Ganes yesterday.”My Lord, I stand by my statement,” Ganes replied.