A Namibian businessman and seven Chinese citizens accused of fraud involving more than N$3 billion will be asked to plead to nearly 1 600 criminal charges in the Windhoek High Court in June next year.
Deputy judge president Hosea Angula postponed the case in which the eight individuals and seven corporate entities are charged to 18 June 2025 at the end of a pretrial hearing in the High Court on Thursday.
Angula told lawyers representing the accused that their clients must be in court on 18 June next year to plead to the charges they are facing, and that after they have pleaded, their matter will be postponed to 20 January 2026, when the hearing of evidence in their trial should start.
The trial is scheduled to run from 20 January to 24 April 2026, Angula also said.
None of the accused were present in court on Thursday, after Angula excused them from attending at the end of a previous pretrial hearing in August.
The eight individual accused are Walvis Bay-based businessman Laurensius Julius (48) and Chinese business people Jack Huang, Tao Huizhong, Gao Zhihua, Jia Hong Ying, Cao Shuhua, Li Dan and Ying Zhang.
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 the country as supposed payment for imported goods.
The state’s indictment contains 1 583 charges in total.
The charges 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.
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 (48) is facing 754 counts of fraud, alternatively theft, 754 counts of money laundering and three charges of presenting false documents and making false declarations.
One of the Chinese accused, Jack Huang, is due to be 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 (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 taxation purposes.
The first arrests in the matter were carried out in December 2016.
Julius and two co-accused who were the first to be arrested were granted bail in an amount of N$1.5 million each after they had been held in custody for a month.
Huang, who was arrested at the start of February 2017, was granted bail in an amount of N$1 million with his first court appearance.
All of the individual accused are free on bail.
Stay informed with The Namibian – your source for credible journalism. Get in-depth reporting and opinions for
only N$85 a month. Invest in journalism, invest in democracy –
Subscribe Now!
