Rambler … Pulling Off The Perfect Heist

The SME Bank saga provides a perfect case study for how to rob, not just a bank, but an entire apathetic nation.

We’ve been robbed before but this one hits right in the nut sack as we’re now broke, despondent and politically in ux.

Namibia Financial Institutions Union (Nafinu) secretary general Asnath Zamuee said recently we’ve been taken for a ride for far too long.

No word yet from Government, Swapo, SPYL, Swapo Women’s League or NUNW and DTA was stopped from discussing the matter in Parliament.

Something stinks like a motherf*cker and it’s not just my winter feet. If Satan’s toenails had smelly armpits they’d be doing duty at the SME Bank as executive somethings.

We’ve been screwed through Pidico, Avid, GIPF, ODC, NHE, NDF. Recently, Bank of Namibia was scammed byAngola in the kwanza deal and Ernst Adjovi did quite A-job-i on us.

But the SME Bank robbery takes the cake. This heist has been meticulously planned and executed. Our money is gone, m*ertoe!

People laugh at us.

Last week the SME Bank only had about N$3,8 million to meet the demands of clients, one of which is our President, who entrusted the bank with hundreds of millions of dollars.

With total liabilities of about N$1,06 billion, the SME Bank is required in terms of banking regulations to hold about N$106 million – 10% of its total liabilities – in liquid assets. Its biggest depositors, National energy Fund and GIPF demanded about N$500 million back… post-haste.

In a sector where other commercial banks make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, the SME Bank was losing N$10 million per month between March 2016 and January this year, according to court documents.

You and I, the Namibian taxpayer, have pumped around N$450 million into the bank. The Namibian Government holds 65% of the shares in the SME Bank.

how did we not act earlier? We knew this was a scam. But as always we did f*kkol. This is what Tileni Mongudhi wrote in

The Namibian in 2013. “…Amid findings by The Namibian that the Bank of Namibia stopped awarding the financial institution a banking licence in 2010 because one of the bank’s linchpins, Enoch Kamushinda, was deemed to ‘lack integrity’ and had no ‘respect for corporate governance’.”

But they got the licence anyway.

Why did the BoN leadership only grow balls after we were relieved of around half-a-billion?

Didn’t Ipumbu Shiimi want to upset the old man?

President Hage Geingob said in a 2015 The Namibian article, “I fought for the investors as a matter of principle. When I saw the manner in which the Zimbabwean investors were being persecuted by the media and others, I had to intervene.”

he also said he spoke to five Zimbabwe ministers who vouched for enoch. Zimbabwe ministers are as committed to looting their country as the SME Bank minority stakeholders were committed to looting ours.

They’re not t to vouch for anyone. They sat up a perfect tool to loot. So, here’s how you pull off the perfect

heist: Ingratiate yourself with the big man. Our backwardness ensured that SME

Bank never became a bank, Adjovi stole N$28 million and Jack Huang is facing the law for tax evasion. Are they getting away with it because they are friends of the temporary occupier of state house?

In Africa, we know that if the big man tells state-owned companies to do this or that or invest in a specific bank the officials will just say, yes excellency!

These crooks probably dropped names and told anyone willing to listen how in they are with the power brokers in our sh*tty little city.

And how do you make sure your looting stays under wraps for as long as possible? You appoint your cronies to oversee the project. Much like the Chinese do. Yes, teachers as bankers because teachers are super humans! earlier this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs said at least 19 Zimbabweans were working for SME Bank while they were either not qualified for the jobs, or held positions which could easily be filled by Namibians.

And they probably had these poor workers by the short and curlies. You do as we say or you go back to teach in Plumtree for three chickens and a tomato per month.

Former SME Bank board chair, Frans Kapofi wrote a letter to home affairs in 2014, saying “the declining of the majority of the SME Bank Zimbabwean expatriates’ work permit applications and current negative media publicity might be misconstrued as going against the very spirit of brotherhood between the two nations”.

No wonder he got such a nice “underperforming” loan from them. Just one of more than N$200 million worth that are not being repaid.

Any good scam is always for the bene t of the disadvantaged. In this case, small businesses. But Woermann Brock, proudly proclaiming to be around since 1894 and who boast numerous shops all over Namibia, got a N$38 million loan from these shysters? Politicians and their hangers on were lavished with loans they couldn’t pay back and weren’t supposed to get.