A BID to recover some of the money that the Social Security Commission lost when it tried to invest N$30 million through an inexperienced asset management company, Avid Investment Corporation, in early 2005 went up to the Supreme Court yesterday.

The liquidator of Avid, Eric Knouwds, is trying to target the personal estate of one of the key figures in the SSC's Avid investment saga, Nico Josea, in an attempt to recover some of the money that the SSC invested through Avid.

An order through which the joint estate of Josea and his wife was provisionally sequestrated was given in the High Court on July 27 2005.

Josea opposed the confirmation of that provisional order, and scored a win in the High Court on December 11 2007, when Judge President Petrus Damaseb discharged the interim order with costs. Judge President Damaseb's decision was based on a procedural point: that the application for the Josea couple's sequestration and the court's order of July 27 2005 had not been properly served on Josea and his wife.

The same opponents in the case that was heard by Judge President Damaseb during March and May 2006 again met each other in the Supreme Court yesterday.

South African counsel Jaco van Rooyen, representing Josea, and Andrew Corbett, representing Knouwds, spent the day arguing technical points that had been raised in the appeal.

By the end of the day, Chief Justice Peter Shivute announced that the court - consisting of the Chief Justice and Acting Judges of Appeal Johan Strydom and Simpson Mtambanengwe - had decided that they would be hearing the appeal only on the issue on which Judge President Damaseb's decision was based, which is the service of the sequestration application and court order on Josea and his wife.

The court will be hearing arguments on that issue today.

Van Rooyen argued yesterday that the appeal is not properly before the court. He argued that the appeal record was filed late - it should have been filed within three months after the ruling had been given in the High Court, but was filed only on July 4 2008.

In terms of the court rules, an appeal is deemed to have been withdrawn if an appeal record is not filed in time.

An application to ask the court's condonation for the late filing should have been made as soon as Knouwds or his lawyers became aware that the appeal record would be filed late, Van Rooyen argued. A condonation application was filed only ten days before the hearing of the appeal, without any explanation why it had taken so long to file that application, Van Rooyen argued.

He also argued that Josea has a constitutional right to a speedy trial.

"Since 2005 he's been dragged through the courts," Van Rooyen charged, adding that Josea has had "a ball and chain" around his ankles for five years now. Van Rooyen further said that the most that Josea is being accused of in the sequestration application is that he squandered money. That "might make my client stupid, but it doesn't make him criminal", Van Rooyen remarked.

Van Rooyen also attacked the appeal record of more than 5 400 pages that is before the court, charging that it is in a shambles and most of it is irrelevant material.

The record before the court is necessary to place the full picture of "an international web of fraud and theft" of money that had been entrusted to Avid before the court, Corbett said.

He said this record is necessary so that the court can evaluate the defences that Josea raised in the sequestration application.

Josea claimed that he had at first not been aware that money that Avid channelled to his asset management company, Namangol Investments, originated from the SSC. He further claimed that his company had in turn invested the money through an investment broker in South Africa.

Those investment transactions were proven to have been bogus, Corbett told the court.