Truck deal tax dodge revealed

FORMER Public Service Commissioner Teckla Lameck, her business partner, Kongo Mokaxwa, and the Swapo-owned transport company Namib Contract Haulage evaded paying full customs duties on trucks and buses which they imported from China at the start of 2007.

This is revealed by invoices used to calculate the customs duties that had to be paid in respect of trucks and buses imported for Namib Contract Haulage and two close corporations of Lameck and Mokaxwa.

The invoices were discussed in testimony heard during the trial of Lameck (52), Mokaxwa (34), and a Chinese co-accused, Yang Fan (42), before Acting Judge Maphios Cheda in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.

Other evidence heard by Acting Judge Cheda yesterday indicates that a document which supposedly recorded a payment of about US$97 000 that a close corporation of Mokaxwa had made to the Chinese company from which he had bought three trucks, is a fake. Mokaxwa does not know that document, his defence lawyer has told the court.

One of the 18 charges which the three accused are facing is a fraud count against Lameck and Mokaxwa alone.

In that charge, they are accused of defrauding Namib Contract Haulage, where Mokaxwa was employed as financial manager and Lameck served as chairperson of the board of directors until March 2009, to the tune of US$144 000 through a truck purchase transaction between 16 December 2006 and 10 June 2009.

It is alleged that Lameck and Mokaxwa brought NCH under the false impression that it had to pay a price of US$54 000 for each of the eight trucks it was buying from a Chinese company, China FAW Group Import & Export, while the correct purchase price in fact was US$36 000 per truck.

By inflating the total cost of the trucks by an amount of US$144 000, Lameck and Mokaxwa managed to buy an additional four trucks for themselves, while those trucks were also paid for by NCH, the prosecution is alleging.

In a plea explanation given when the three accused pleaded not guilty to all charges on Thursday last week, it was stated that according to Lameck and Mokaxwa the final price that NCH paid for the trucks it had bought from the Chinese company was US$54 000 per truck. That unit price included spare parts, they claim.

Senior counsel Gerson Hinda, who is leading the team of defence lawyers representing the three accused, also told a previous prosecution witness this week that Mokaxwa, representing his close corporation, Kongom Trading CC, signed an agreement with China FAW Group Import & Export in Beijing in December 2006 to buy three tipper trucks from the company at a price of US$39 200 per truck.

However, by the time the trucks had been landed at Walvis Bay harbour in late January 2007 and customs duties had to be calculated, commercial invoices which were provided to the customs authorities reflected the trucks’ prices as being a much lower US$12 000 per truck.

Leonard Shidute, a manager at Woker Freight Services at Walvis Bay, which was the customs clearing agent for the consignment of trucks delivered to NCH, Kongom Trading and a close corporation of Lameck, Naapopje Trading, told the court that Mokaxwa was listed as the contact person in respect of the consignments destined for NCH, Kongom Trading and also Naapopje Trading.

According to the commercial invoice provided to Woker Freight Services the customs value declared for the twelve tipper trucks which were imported was US$12 000 (N$85 227) for each of the trucks, Shidute testified.

On the commercial invoice the customs value declared for five 60-seater air-conditioned buses imported by NCH was US$25 000 (N$177 557) per bus, while the customs value declared for another five 60-seater buses without air-conditioning was US$21 000 (N$149 148) a bus, he said.

The customs value of two 27-seater buses also imported by NCH was stated as US$15 000 (N$106 534) and US$12 000 (N$85 227) respectively, according to the invoice.

Customs duties of 20 percent had to be paid on the declared value of the imported trucks and buses, Shidute said.

The declared values were substantially lower than the prices on previous invoices from China FAW Group Import & Export.

In an invoice dated 25 May 2006, the trucks’ price was reflected as US$36 000 a truck, the 60-seater buses with air-conditioning cost US$64 100 a bus, the 60-seater buses without air-conditioning cost US$60 000 a bus, and the smaller buses cost US$26 300 and US$24 500 respectively.

The court also heard earlier this week that Mokaxwa provided supposed documentary proof of bank transfers to the board of NCH when his close corporation’s involvement in the truck transaction was queried by the board of Kalahari Holdings,which is the holding company of NCH.

One of the documents allegedly provided purported to record a transfer of US$97 481 from the bank account of Kongom Trading to China FAW Import & Export on 1 August 2006.

On the day before that supposed transfer, though, there was only N$411,92 in Kongom Trading’s account at Bank Windhoek, an official at the bank, Ryan Cloete, testified.

The transfer of US$97 481 is also not reflected on a statement showing transactions on the close corporation’s account in that period, and could not be found on other bank records showing all of the international money transfers done by the bank at that time, Cloete testified.

Mokaxwa’s instructions are that he does not know the document recording the purported transfer, Hinda told Cloete in brief cross-examination.