Lameck and co-accused walk free

TEN years after their arrest in connection with corruption charges, former Public Service Commission member Teckla Lameck and two co-accused have gone free on all charges on which they were prosecuted.

Lameck (58), her business partner Kongo Mokaxwa (40) and Chinese citizen Yang Fan (48) were found not guilty on all of the 18 charges that they faced in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

They were charged in connection with a multimillion-dollar deal through which Namibia’s government bought Chinese-made scanning equipment at alleged inflated prices,

Their acquittal came a week after deputy prosecutor general Dominic Lisulo conceded that the state did not manage to present sufficient evidence against them to require that they should be placed on their defence on 14 of the 18 charges on which they were prosecuted.

Lisulo tried to soldier on in respect of four of the charges, but that proved to be in vain when judge Christie Liebenberg found yesterday that on those charges, too, the state’s evidence would not support a conviction.

The prosecution’s case was significantly weakened through setbacks that it suffered when much of the evidence on which it planned to rely was ruled inadmissible during the trial.

The state suffered the first of those setbacks when judge Liebenberg ruled in July last year that six search warrants through which the Anti-Corruption Commission collected evidence during its investigation of the case did not meet some legal requirements, with the result that the state could not use evidence gathered through the warrants.

In January this year, the judge also ruled that notices through which the ACC collected other evidence did not meet legal requirements either, resulting in that evidence, too, being excluded.

The charges which Lisulo conceded had not been proven included two counts of fraud, which encompassed allegations that Lameck, Mokaxwa and Yang defrauded the Ministry of Finance with a multimillion-dollar transaction in which the government bought X-ray scanning equipment for Namibia’s customs authorities in 2009, and allegations that Lameck and Mokaxwa defrauded the Swapo-owned Namib Contract Haulage through a transaction in which the company bought buses and lorries in China in 2006.

Both fraud charges also included claims that the prices paid for the goods purchased had been inflated so that the accused could derive financial benefits from the deals.

The only charges on which the prosecution maintained that Lameck, Mokaxwa and Yang should not be discharged were three counts under the Immigration Control Act and a count under the Anti-Corruption Act that was faced by Lameck only.

In the charges under the Immigration Control Act, the state alleged that Yang, Lameck and Mokaxwa falsely informed the ministry of home affairs that Yang was to be employed by Namib Contract Haulage in order to have a Namibian work permit issued to him, and that Yang also worked for other entities while he only had a work permit for employment with Namib Contract Haulage.

Lameck was also accused of having corruptly acquired a private interest in an X-ray scanner purchase agreement between the Ministry of Finance and the Chinese company Nuctech in 2006 and 2007, while she was holding a public office in the Public Service Commission and did not have the required consent from the president to also perform other paid work outside her official duties.

The one count of fraud on which the state conceded defeat last week was connected to a transaction in which the Ministry of Finance bought X-ray scanning equipment at a total cost of US$55,3 million (then about N$477 million) from Nuctech, which was represented by Yang, in early 2009.

The prosecution alleged that the price of the scanning equipment was inflated to enable Nuctech to pay a ‘commission’ of at least US$12,8 million to a close corporation of Lameck and Mokaxwa, Teko Trading CC, while Teko Trading played no role in the transaction between the ministry and the Chinese company.

After the Ministry of Finance had made an advance payment of about US$12,8 million to Nuctech in February 2009, the company paid some US$4,2 million (about N$42 million at the time) into Teko Trading’s bank account during March 2009, and that money was then shared by Lameck, Mokaxwa and Yang, the prosecution charged.

Defence lawyer Sisa Namandje represented the three accused during their trial.