The state has been given a chance to call its last witness to testify in the trial of eight people facing 1 583 criminal charges in connection with an alleged customs fraud scheme involving more than N$3 billion.
A postponement so that the state can call a London-based chartered accountant, Roy Waligora, as a witness in the trial about alleged customs fraud committed between 2013 and 2016 will be the last postponement given to the state, judge Eileen Rakow said after she delivered a ruling in the Windhoek High Court on Monday.
Rakow said she wants the state’s case in the trial, which started in January, to reach its end by the middle of December.
The state’s application for a postponement, which was opposed by defence lawyers involved in the trial, was granted after Rakow noted that Waligora will be called as an expert witness who led a team that compiled a forensic report about alleged fraud and money laundering committed with import transactions in Namibia.
The court accepted that Waligora “will be called as an expert witness by the state and that he will testify regarding his interpretation of the findings as well as to the conclusions the investigating team arrived at, and that this in turn can offer some assistance to the court in interpreting the evidence before it”, Rakow said in her ruling.
The trial will continue from 16 to 26 November, Rakow ordered yesterday.
All of the accused in the matter denied guilt on a total of 1 583 charges at the start of their trial.
The accused are a Namibian businessman, Laurensius Julius (49), seven Chinese citizens, including businessman Jack Huang, and seven corporate entities.
The charges against the accused consist of 786 counts of fraud, alternatively theft, 786 charges of money laundering, and 11 counts of presenting false documents and making false declarations, which are contraventions of the Customs and Excise Act of 1998.
The state is alleging that the eight individual accused and seven corporate entities controlled by some of the accused defrauded Namibia’s customs and excise authorities and Nedbank Namibia by declaring incorrect values for goods imported into Namibia and inflating the costs of freight and other charges for imports.
This allegedly enabled them to send inflated amounts of money out of Namibia as supposed payments for imported goods.
The state is alleging that two corporate entities of which Julius was the sole member or shareholder, Extreme Customs Clearing Services and Organise Freight Services, were the clearing agents for 105 entities that imported goods into Namibia from 2013 to 2016.
The importers paid the equivalent of about N$3.1 billion to suppliers in China for the goods they imported, but overstated the costs of freight and other charges that had to be paid for the imports to inflate the amounts they remitted from Namibia to China, the state is alleging.
Julius is facing 754 charges of fraud, alternatively theft, 754 counts of money laundering, and three charges of presenting false documents and making false declarations.
Huang is being tried on 102 counts of fraud or theft, 102 charges of money laundering and seven counts of presenting false documents or making false declarations.
In the fraud charges against Huang, the state is alleging that during the period from March 2013 to October 2014 he remitted a total amount of about N$224.7 million from Namibia to China for goods of which the value declared to the customs authorities was US$1.55 million (then about N$15.9 million).
The state is also alleging that, in addition to vastly inflating the value of goods imported into Namibia to increase the amounts they were remitting to China, the accused under-declared the income of their businesses in Namibia for tax purposes.
The first arrests in the matter were carried out in December 2016.
All of the individual accused have been released on bail since their arrests.
