Namfisa not amused by employee’s questions

NAMFISA has dismissed claims lodged by a ‘disgruntled Namfisa employee’ about irregularities on the regulatory authority’s board.

In a letter sent to The Namibian, the ‘disgruntled employee’ questioned the presence of the Assistant Governor of the Bank of Namibia, Ipumbu Shiimi, on the Namfisa board, citing a conflict of interest in a Namfisa-regulated company.He accused Shiimi of having a stake in an empowerment company called Horizon Investments, which he said has ‘huge shares in a company that Namfisa supervises.’ He also wrote that in light of this, the Assistant Governor ‘plays double standards’ and ‘is probably the one who is behind this thing of suspending the CEO [Rainer Ritter]’.Namfisa Head of Corporate Communications, Ebben Kalondo, says ‘it is highly unfortunate that the individual failed to bring any facts to the fore and this has become a worrying trend that individuals blatantly use public platforms with subjective and false accusations, especially with regard to Namfisa’.The Namibian has established the following:Neither Namfisa, nor Shiimi himself, denies that he is a shareholder in Horizon Investment, a Namibian empowerment company.Horizon has a 15 per cent stake in Prudential Portfolio Managers Namibia [Pty] Ltd, a company regulated by Namfisa.Shiimi resigned as a shareholder in the company effective December 2007, shortly after he was nominated to the board of Namfisa, and donated a large portion of his Horizon shares to CERET, a child welfare organisation, and the remainder to another shareholder. Shiimi, Namfisa and Horizon director John Walenga, who directed The Namibian to the company’s auditors for additional verification, all back this up.A contact at the company’s auditors could not be reached by the time of going to press, however.According to Shiimi, who said he was willing to open his banking details for verification, since his appointment onto Namfisa’s board, he has not received dividends from Horizon, and he also turned down dividends for the period between his Namfisa appointment and his Horizon resignation. But while Shiimi’s name appears to be cleared on matters of conflicting interests in this case, the ‘disgruntled’ employee’s outburst perhaps provides an indication of the conflicting feelings prevailing at the authority, following the suspension of CEO, Rainer Ritter.The employee, who has followed the unfolding of events at his company through the media, had introduced his letter by stating, ‘I read the suspension and discipline against Rainer Ritter, CEO of Namfisa, and am not happy about this because this man is good and keeps to his word. He is only arrogant and does not listen to others in a proper way but he does not like people who don’t work and do funny things at Namfisa.’ Ritter was suspended last month based on the preliminary findings of an investigation by Ernst and Young into the troubled financial watchdog. In the latest information at hand, charges were being finalised against Ritter, and a panel for a disciplinary hearing was being assembled.Regarding the employee’s act of getting his concerns off his chest under the media spotlight, Kalondo says: ‘We also wish to state that it is against our code of ethics to make false accusations and use the public forum for that purpose. This is of greater concern to us that there are people possibly within Namfisa, that want to deliberately smear and mislead while it is incumbent upon Namfisa staff to uphold high standards for ethical conduct.Calls to Namfisa’s chairperson to establish the date of Ritter’s hearing and the nature of the allegations against him proved futile. nangula@namibian.com.na