Swartz denies Claasen’s resignation was suspicious

REHOBOTH Town Council acting CEO and manager of corporate affairs and human resources, Willie Swartz, on Friday denied that the council’s former financial manager, Chris Claasen, had left under a cloud of suspicion.

‘As far as we [the Rehoboth Town Council] are concerned, Mr Claasen’s resignation was voluntary and he did not resign as a result of any missing money,’ said Swartz.A local daily reported that Claasen had resigned after allegations of an unauthorised transfer of N$1,8 million from the Build Together Programme account to another. Another allegation made was that the Adonai report – which deals with alleged financial irregularities at the council – stated that Claasen ought to have accounted for over N$8 million. Swartz said the council was ‘not aware’ of N$10 million allegedly missing from the council coffers. ‘As a matter of fact, I deny having discussed Claasen’s resignation with any media house,’ said Swartz. Swartz said the Adonai report ‘is a document which became politically compromised’ because the company that compiled the report ‘elected to provide the contents of the report’ to the United People’s Movement (UPM) opposition party that holds two seats on the local authority council. He further claimed that UPM had discussed the Adonai report – which he said is supposed to be a confidential document for internal use – at its 2010 election campaign rallies. ‘It has become the UPM’s single biggest campaign tool and when they gained two seats on the local authority council, it became the UPM’s single most important agenda; they have offered nothing else,’ accused Swartz. He said the town council had opted to use other avenues to deal with the content of the report, ‘not only to test the validity of the findings in the report, but also to ascertain it has a basis in law to act on any suspected wrongdoing’. ‘I must also point out that the Rehoboth Town Council has never been reluctant to act against perceived corruption, particularly the current group of councillors,’ said Swartz, who is a Swapo Party member although he emphasised that he serves as an administrator. He added: ‘I can assure the public and stakeholders to sit and watch whether the council is going to do nothing about corruption or not.’ Swartz denied any infighting in the town council, but blamed the opposition parties represented in the local authority – the UPM and the Rally for Democracy and Progress with one seat – of not knowing what to offer the council. ‘In one breath they [referring to the UPM] participate in decisions [at council level] and the next they go out in the streets and demonstrate against those decisions. That is how dishonourable they are,’ he charged, adding: ‘There is no fighting, no bickering and for the first time in the history, local authority councillors and Swapo Party structures operate in harmony as never seen before.’