ITALIAN fugitive Vito Palazzolo, who was detained in Thailand on Friday, has long-standing dealings with Swapo dating back to the apartheid days, allegedly aimed at securing his business interests.
Specifically, Palazzolo had business dealings with murdered Swapo leader Anton Lubowski months before the Swapo leader’s assassination and much later with figures close to the founding President of Namibia, Sam Nujoma. A South African investigative report reveals that Palazzolo struck up a friendship with Lubowski in the course of 1989. ‘In June 1989, Palazzolo’s son, Christian, and lawyer Cyril Prisman visited Anton Lubowski in Windhoek. In the same month, three payments totalling R100 000 were made into Lubowski’s bank account by Global Capital Investments, a front company for South Africa’s Military Intelligence,’ reads the report. Palazzolo has been linked to the deposit of the money as a front for military intelligence, an allegation he has denied in the past. He has also denied having knowledge of those responsible for the murder of Lubowski. The report further reveals that Palazzolo invited Lubowski to Switzerland in August 1989 for a meeting. ‘Lubowski returned to Namibia on August 25 and on September 12 was murdered, allegedly by military intelligence agents,’ states the report. A Namibian inquest into the death of Lubowski is said to have found that members of the Civil Co-operation Bureau were involved. In an interview with South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper in 1997, Palazzolo admitted to having met Lubowski in Switzerland, and having facilitated a successful fundraising drive for Swapo’s election campaign among European businesspeople. Reads the article: ‘Palazzolo says he met Lubowski months before the murder through his Cape Town lawyer, Cyril Prisman, to discuss the prospect of a Swapo government seizing the game farm he owns in Namibia. Palazzolo’s father-in-law paid Lubowski 5 000 Swiss francs to fly out to Switzerland, where the two talked further.’’He was a freedom fighter looking to raise funds for the election. I was looking to secure my farm. He never gave me any reason to believe he was an agent,’ Palazzolo told the Mail and Guardian.In the Mail and Guardian interview, Palazzolo also revealed he and Lubowski suspected they were being shadowed in Switzerland, and that Lubowski told Palazzolo he was used to being watched. Palazzolo says he later learnt of Lubowski’s murder while he was watching TV with his wife and son in a Swiss hotel. ‘For me it was a tragedy. I was hoping he was going to become minister of justice or Windhoek attorney general, so I could have moved to Namibia. My hope was gone,’ Palazzolo was quoted in the 1997 interview.Nevertheless, ten years later in 2007, Palazzolo went on to buy a house in Windhoek’s Kasteel Street, Luxury Hill, registered in his alias Roberto von Palace Kolbatschenko, and that of his wife, Tirtza von Palace Kolbatchenko. They bought the house in March 2007, title number T5235/1997.He also had business dealings with Zackey Nefungo Nujoma involving diamond business, though it is not clear whether their business relationship is still alive. Nefungo Nujoma’s phone went unanswered when The Namibian repeatedly tried to reach him.Previously, Palazzolo had been linked to part ownership of the farms Omburo-Süd outside Omaruru, as well as Klein Omaramba and Ezeru outside Okahandja. According to an article by freelance journalist John Grobler in 2007, all three farms have subsequently been transferred to other people. Grobler, who has in the past reported on the dealings of Palazzolo in Namibia, has also since apologised to Palazzolo on his website for his ‘own tendentious reporting’. Reads Grobler’s apology: ‘The problems of course is that there has been tendentious reporting on your case: from the first court to the most recent, the media has reported the accusations, but never the outcomes. The question is, why? Is it that they (the newspaper editors in question) have a hidden agenda, or simply a case of miss-placed [sic] false pride, that they cannot say ‘sorry, we were wrong, we’re sorry?’ I am sorry for my own tendentious reporting – and will keep kicking this door until something gives…’On his website, Palazzolo has been claiming to be a victim of malicious prosecution. He said all subsequent legal proceedings against him in Italy were based on the same allegations which he had faced in Switzerland, for which he was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison.His later conviction, in his absence, in an Italian court violated the principle of double jeopardy, according to which someone cannot be tried for the same crime twice, he is arguing.The Namibian understands that the Namibian Police knew that Palazzolo had been living in the country, but because the Italian police had not requested his extradition, the Namibian Police could do nothing. A high-ranking Police officer, who was not authorised to comment to the media, said the Italians had been dragging their feet in providing the Namibian Police with the necessary documentation to get the extradition request going.
