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Namibia: Govt Official Shrugs Off Payments As 'Loans' and 'Fanciful'
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
4 July 2008
Posted to the web 4 July 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
CORRUPT payments? What corrupt payments? They were loans, actually - and the rest of them never even happened, really.
This was the gist of the defence of Ministry of Environment and Tourism official Sackey Namugongo that his lawyer aired in the Windhoek Regional Court yesterday in response to claims from a witness in Namugongo's corruption and fraud trial that he had made six separate payments, totalling N$60 000, to Namugongo from April to September 2006 after applying with Namugongo for three gambling house licences.
The only payments from State witness Fillimon Erastus that Namugongo admits to receiving, happen to be proven by documentary evidence in the form of bank deposit slips.
Those admitted payments totalled N$13 000, and they were actually loans to Namugongo anyway, defence lawyer Titus Mbaeva told Erastus yesterday.
Claimed further payments totalling N$47 000 for which no documentary evidence exists - Erastus testified he made all these payments to Namugongo in cash - never happened, actually, according to Mbaeva's instructions from his client, Magistrate Sarel Jacobs heard during Mbaeva's cross-examination of Erastus.
Namugongo (56) is on trial on 40 charges, consisting of 20 main counts of corruption and 20 main counts of fraud.
The charges are based on allegations that Namugongo had accepted payments totalling N$365 000 from 18 people who had applied to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism's Division for Gambling, Casinos and Lotteries to be issued with gambling house licences.
Namugongo was heading the division as Deputy Director at the time, with the alleged corrupt payments claimed to have taken place between March and September 2006.
A moratorium on the issuing of gambling house licences was in place at the time, and is still in force, the prosecution is alleging in the trial.
Erastus, who told the court that he owns bars at Swakopmund, Okahandja and Walvis Bay, testified that after submitting a gambling house licence application to Namugongo in the latter's office in Windhoek on April 10 2006, Namugongo provided him with a letter confirming that the application had been received.
According to Erastus, Namugongo also told him that he could use this letter to start up his planned gambling houses while he awaited the receipt of the actual licences.
Namugongo is denying this, according to Mbaeva.
Namugongo is also denying Erastus's testimony that after Namugongo had accepted his application and provided him with the letter, Namugongo asked and accepted a payment of N$32 000 in cash from Erastus for the assistance he had given to Erastus, Mbaeva has indicated to the court.
Erastus testified that on the same occasion that he handed over N$32 000 to Namugongo, the latter provided him with his bank account number, into which Erastus later had a further N$13 000 deposited.
According to Mbaeva's instructions from his client, though, Erastus and Namugongo had a conversation about "assistance", in which Erastus at one point told Namugongo that if official needed any assistance, he should not hesitate to contact him.
After Erastus had said this to him, Namugongo gave Erastus his bank account number, Mbaeva told the witness.
"Is that so?" Erastus replied to this.
Erastus confirmed that because of the help Namugongo gave him with the application for gambling house licences - which he has still not received - he and Namugongo became friends.
Mbaeva also told Erastus that as a result of this friendship, Erastus later advanced loans of N$5 000, N$5 000 and N$3 000 - the three amounts that Erastus had deposited into Namugongo's bank account.
"All I can say is it's not true," Erastus said to this.
He told the court that after paying the N$32 000 and three bank deposits totalling N$13 000 to Namugongo, he also handed over two further payments of N$8 000 and N$7 000 in cash to Namugongo in Windhoek.
"There were no receipts," he said.
According to Namugongo, these cash payments - like the alleged N$32 000 payment - never happened, Mbaeva told Erastus.
Erastus chuckled in the witness box when he heard this.
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He responded: "All I want to say is I came to tell the truth. I didn't come to omit anything or add anything."
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