Teko Trading assets ruling set for Friday

A RULING that should determine the fate of the first assets to be restrained in terms of Namibia’s Prevention of Organised Crime Act last year is now scheduled to be given in the High Court on Friday.

The ruling, which has been pending since mid-September last year, had been expected yesterday, but is now set to be given at the end of the week, it was announced in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.The assets that are the subject of the ruling are connected to Public Service Commission member Teckla Lameck, her business partner, Kongo Mokaxwa, and Chinese national Yang Fan. They are all charged with counts of corruption, fraud and bribery as a result of their involvement in a multi-million dollar contract for the provision of Chinese-made x-ray scanning equipment to the Ministry of Finance.It is alleged that a ‘commission’ payment of over N$42 million that the Chinese manufacturer of the equipment, Nuctech Company, made to Teko Trading CC, a close corporation of which Lameck and Mokaxwa are the two members, in March last year was a corrupt payment that constituted the proceeds of crime.Yang was employed as Nuctech’s representative in southern Africa. At the same time, he also took up employment with Teko Trading, which signed agreements with the Chinese company to supposedly act as its agent in the deal with the Finance Ministry.In return, Teko Trading was paid more than N$42 million, and was set to be paid some N$80 million more – all for allegedly doing very little that would have warranted earnings on such a generous scale.Millions of dollars worth of assets connected to Teko Trading, Nuctech, Lameck, Mokaxwa and Yang were in effect frozen by the High Court in terms of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act on July 6 last year. That was the first time that the Act was used to restrain assets claimed to be the proceeds of crime.The order through which the assets were restrained is an interim order, which has in the meantime been extended several times. The order was again extended yesterday, with a ruling in the matter set to be given on Friday, Judge Elton Hoff said yesterday.Judge President Petrus Damaseb and Judge Collins Parker heard arguments on the issue whether the order should be confirmed, or should be set aside, in the High Court on September 14 and 15 last year.