Esau says he did not keep dual-SIM cellphone

Former fisheries and marine resources minister Bernhard Esau says he took a dual-SIM cellphone that was given to him by a supposed investor from Hong Kong – but he did not accept the phone, as he later had it returned to the person that gave it to him.

“There’s a difference between accepting and taking,” Esau remarked as he recounted the events around his receipt of a dual-SIM cellphone, which was recorded in an Al Jazeera documentary programme on alleged corruption in Namibia’s fishing industry, in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

Esau gave this explanation after deputy prosecutor general Cliff Lutibezi asked him if he owned a black iPhone with two SIM cards from China.

Esau’s immediate answer was that he did not own such as phone, adding that he was offered one, but returned it.

He went on to tell judge David Munsu, who is hearing testimony in a bail application by Esau and a co-accused in the Fishrot fishing quotas fraud and corruption case, Nigel van Wyk, that a lawyer with interests in Namibia’s fishing sector, Sacky Kadhila Amoomo, invited him to dinner when Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, paid a state visit to Namibia.

Kagame made a state visit to Namibia in August 2019.

Esau said the dinner with Amoomo was a meeting with “so-called investors from Hong Kong”.

He said during the meeting at a restaurant in Klein Windhoek he took out the two cellphones that he carried with him – the one an official phone and the other a private phone – and put them on a table while remarking that it was inconvenient to have to carry two cellphones. Esau said he added that he had heard that in Hong Kong there were cellphones that could be operated with two SIM cards.

“I did not ask for a cellphone,” Esau said.

He continued that during a subsequent visit to Japan, one of the supposed investors he had met in Windhoek, who used the name Johnny, called him and said he wanted to see the president. Esau said he turned down that request.

During a second meeting with Johnny, he was given a dual-SIM cellphone, Esau said.
He said he thanked Johnny and out of courtesy took the phone, but never used it, because he had suspicions about the phone and felt he could not take something from someone he hardly knew.

He said he later told Amoomo to take the cellphone back to Johnny, who he had realised was not an actual investor.

The Al Jazeera documentary ‘Anatomy of a Bribe’, in which he was recorded talking about a dual-SIM iPhone during a meeting in a restaurant in Windhoek, did not include parts of that meeting in which the supposed investors told him they had sponsored Frelimo in Mozambique, Esau said.

Lutibezi started his cross-examination of Esau yesterday with a blunt question: “Mister Esau, are you an honest man?”
Esau answered: “As honest as honest can be, my lord.”

Later in his testimony, he also told the court that while the charges he is facing are serious, he is denying that he is guilty of any of the charges.

Said Esau: “In my moral or ethical chemistry I’m not a person who would touch anything that is not mine.”

Esau, who has been held in custody since his arrest near the end of November 2019, is due to continue testifying today.