La Rochelle battle rages on

THE WIDOW of the late Hans Jürgen Koch has filed an urgent application in the High Court to ask that all belongings that were stripped from Koch’s farm, La Rochelle, last week should be returned to her.

Simultaneously, Rachel Nathaniël-Koch has given notice that she is filing a case in which she is asking that the court declare the La Rochelle Trust invalid on the basis that the trust was founded solely for the purpose of concealing her late husband’s assets during his long battle to avoid extradition to Germany, where he was wanted on multiple fraud charges.According to Nathaniël-Koch, her application to dissolve the trust is based on the fact that there was ‘no bona fide and honest intention to create a trust for and on behalf of the beneficiaries’ by her late husband.These applications come in the wake of the latest court tussle fought between Nathaniël-Koch and her longtime adversary, lawyer Evert Gous, who is one of the two trustees of the La Rochelle Ranch Trust and allegedly the sole director of La Rochelle (Pty) Ltd, the company that owns the farm La Rochelle and in turn is wholly owned by the trust. In her founding affidavit for the urgent application to return all goods to La Rochelle farm, Nathaniël-Koch claimed Gous’s motivations were a manoeuvre to ‘force me out of the farm La Rochelle’ and described the allegations from Gous of outstanding monies owed to La Rochelle Trust as a ‘sham claim’. On March 10, Gous, a legal practitioner at Theunissen, Louw & Partners, and a fellow trustee, Christoff Tscharnkte, were awarded a default judgement against La Rochelle (Pty) Ltd in their capacity as trustees of the La Rochelle Trust.They claimed that the La Rochelle company owed more than N$11 million to the trust. As a result of the default judgement, the Deputy Sheriff of Tsumeb removed all moveable assets from the farm over the course of four days last week. Nathaniël-Koch is claiming that Gous is now the sole director of La Rochelle (Pty) Ltd after the resignation of former director Eric Knouwds earlier this year.’I am interested to know when he became a director and how he was appointed. This puts him in a clear case of conflict of interests between the trust and the La Rochelle company,’ she is charging. She added that ‘the conflict of interest is discernibly clear’.Nathaniël-Koch makes it clear in the affidavit that she believes the latest volley against her from Gous and Tscharnkte ‘appears for all intents and purposes to be my disguised eviction from the farm. It is an open secret that (Gous), since my husband’s death, has been trying to get me away from the farm in particular from my house on the farm’.Nathaniël-Koch describes the action by Gous and Tscharnkte as a ‘sham claim’ and noted that ‘even if such a loan exists it is clear that it is not due and payable’.She furthermore claimed that the ‘raid’ on the farm was an attempt by Gous and others ‘to force me out of the farm La Rochelle’.In the affidavit, Nathaniël-Koch said upon hearing the news last week, ‘I was shocked, under panic and devastated to hear what happened and when I attended the farm I was in shock to see that virtually all my own belongings were attached’.Nathaniël-Koch claims that the assets removed from the farm last week included many of her own personal belongings.Nathaniël-Koch argues in her affidavit that the default judgement was given without proper consultation with her and gave her no opportunity to defend herself. ‘I was surprised that without any notice to me as an interested party … they proceeded and obtained a default judgement without informing me or my legal practitioner.’According to Nathaniël-Koch, the action against her can be linked back to the fact that Gous has made it clear that he intends to sell the farm, a notion she claims she has always opposed.She added that the last move is in line with the efforts of Gous and Tscharnkte to ‘force me into a position where I would not be able to object to the sale of the farm’.Furthermore, Nathaniël-Koch has stated that she intends to file a new application which will ask the court to review the validity of the La Rochelle Trust.According to Nathaniël-Koch, she has been informed that the trust was created in order to ‘disguise such assets so that in case of a successful extradition’ the late Koch’s assets would be concealed in the trust. Nathaniël-Koch claims in an unsigned provisional affidavit, which is in possession of The Namibian, that it ‘is clear … that there was no bona fide intention to create the trust’. She stated that the urgency of the case is based primarily on the fact that once the belongings are sold at public auction, it is likely that even though the decision could in future be reversed by the courts, the value of the assets sold cannot be obtained through an auction.The case is scheduled to be heard in the High Court on Monday.