Fishrot trial’s Fitty fails with bail appeal bid

One of the men facing charges in the Fishrot fraud, corruption and racketeering trial, Tamson ‘Fitty’ Hatuikulipi, will not be permitted to appeal against a High Court judgement in which his latest bail application was turned down in December last year.

An application by Hatuikulipi for leave to appeal against judge David Munsu’s decision to dismiss his request to be granted bail failed in the Windhoek High Court on Monday, with Munsu concluding that Hatuikulipi does not have prospects for success with an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Munsu said he would prefer that Hatuikulipi should be able to ventilate his concerns about being refused bail up to Namibia’s top court, but he is bound by the law, which states that permission to appeal should be given only if he is satisfied that an appeal enjoys prospects of success.

He was unable to find that, though, Munsu added.

Hatuikulipi (44) has been trying repeatedly since July 2020 to persuade a court to grant bail to him.

Hatuikulipi, his father-in-law, former minister of fisheries and marine resources Bernhard Esau, who is also an accused in the Fishrot case, and four co-accused were arrested near the end of November 2019 and have been held in custody since then.

Hatuikulipi and his co-accused are alleged to have been involved in the unlawful acquisition and use of Namibian fishing quotas from December 2011 until November 2019.

Hatuikulipi and Esau first applied to be granted bail in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court in July 2020. That application was not successful, and an appeal against the dismissal of their bail application failed in the High Court in February 2021.

Munsu heard a second bail application by Hatuikulipi in the Windhoek High Court from July 2022. That application was dismissed in December 2022.

Hatuikulipi’s second bail application before Munsu started in May last year and ended in December, when Munsu found that additional documents on which Hatuikulipi relied during his third application for bail did not offer a new perspective on the matter on which he had previously been refused bail.

Munsu also commented that it served no purpose for Hatuikulipi to keep repeating his argument that the state did not have evidence on which he might be found guilty on the charges he is facing in the Fishrot case, and that a bail hearing was not the proper forum where his guilt or otherwise was to be established.

“It is in the interest of the applicant [Hatuikulipi] that the matter proceeds to trial, the platform where he will meet his accusers and will have an opportunity to discredit their versions,” Munsu said in December in his judgement on Hatuikulipi’s third application to be granted bail.

Defence lawyer Mbanga Siyomunji represented Hatuikulipi during the bail hearing.

The state was represented by deputy prosecutor general Hesekiel Iipinge