Oshakati bosses could face graft probe

THE Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) will consider investigating Oshakati’s outgoing councillors for corruption over land deals allegedly benefiting themselves, friends and cronies.

The councillors are also accused of abusing their authority and undermining the duties of certain key departments at the municipality to favour and approve friends’ land applications “without consulting council officials”.

These allegations are contained in an anonymous complaint submitted to the ACC earlier this month.

ACC spokesperson Josefina Nghituwamata last week confirmed that the commission is evaluating a report of alleged corruption involving the Oshakati Town Council.

“Once a complaint is received, a preliminary evaluation on the matter reported determining if it falls under the ACC mandate or not, is carried out. The complaint is then registered on the case management and a file is opened before a full investigation is conducted,” Nghituwamata said.

In the report the councillors are accused of embarking on a scheme to enrich themselves by obtaining land and reselling it at high prices.

“For the past few years there has been outright and open corruption by the current outgoing councillors […],” the complaint reads.

MAYOR DENIES ALLEGATIONS

Those fingered in the report include mayor Angelius Iiyambo, and councillors Katrina Shimbulu, Loise Shivolo, Gabriel Kamwanka and Linus Tobias.

Some of the land deals the ACC has been requested to look into include Shivolo’s application for a business plot.

According to the document, this application was approved without an erf number allocated to the piece of land which was given to the councillor, “because land allocation was done by the councillors themselves”.

“This is a form of self-enrichment, as [councillors] sell off these erven after allocation for profit,” the report reads.

The ACC was also told to look into a deal in which a company called VFK was allocated 100 plots to develop houses on.

According to the document, this company allegedly failed to build houses for beneficiaries who have already started paying off their bonds.

A decision by councillors to push for the advertisement of the position of manager for planning and properties at the town should also be scrutinised, the document says.

Iyambo says the allegations are “misguided”.

He says the accusers are complaining because they were not benefiting from the council’s decisions.

“If they were benefiting, they were not going to be talking about those things,” he says.

“Why are they only coming to complain now? Some of those people complaining have a lot of plots to their names, but we are not talking about them. There are a lot of things happening, but we are not talking about them,” he says.

Iyambo says the complaint to the ACC is part of some officials’ bigger plot to intimidate and blackmail councillors.

These officials include councillors who failed to make Swapo’s list of candidates for the Oshakati Town Council, the mayor says.

“ They did that illegally. There is no decision taken by only three councillors. They are just bitter because they lost out at the primaries,” he says.

Iyambo denies claims that the councillors have been misusing their authority to allocate land to themselves and their friends.

He says some officials at the council are guilty of conflicting interests when they deliberately change the council’s resolutions and implement their own.

Iiyambo says this can be proven through the VFK deal.

Iiyambo says he will reveal “big things” after the upcoming elections.

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