Iuze Mukube
During the bail hearing yesterday in the fraud and corruption case, former Namcor’s logistics manager Cedric Willemse revealed that Erongo Petroleum was never his first choice as a customer for a fuel supply agreement with the oil parastatal.
He was debunking the State’s allegation that he conspired with others to allow Enercon and Erongo Petroleum to go outside the credit limit, therefore creating a benefit for the entities.
Additionally, Willemse denied the allegations that he caused Erongo Petroleum to acquire a debt of over N$260 million.
He stated that, at the time, he preferred a company called Bachmus for the fuel agreement, as it had a similar customer base and was much stronger than Erongo Petroleum.
However, due to the decision being significant and Bachmus not being an exclusive customer of Namcor, the credit committee decided to sell fuel over a term of 60 days.
Willemse said Bachmus approached Namcor to buy 10 million liters of fuel but procured fuel to the value of N$180 million, which exceeded its credit limit of N$30 million.
He stated that after taking into consideration Bachmus’s credit worthiness, ability to pay, liquidity and solvency, the credit committee decided to sell fuel to the company on a term of 60 days.
He noted that exceeding the credit limit by selling fuel to Bachmus worth N$180 million while having a credit limit of N$30 million was not against the credit policy.
Willemse said the discretion of the credit policy allows one to take into consideration the customer growth, value of the stock to either appreciate or depreciate as well as credit worthiness.
He added that the credit limit does not depend on looking at the policy through tunnel vision, but that the departments at the time were given the objective and aim to achieve revenue from N$600 million to N$5.4 billion.
Willemse said that due to the complexity that the oil industry operates under, the anomaly of exceeding the credit limit at Namcor may still be practised today.
He stated that the notion by the State that he has many accounts can only be understood as transactional accounts.
He said this account was used for transferring money to pay for university fees for his kids and other related expenses like insurance and life policies.
The defence provided a herd statement disputing the allegation by the State that he did not have a large quantity of animals to sell.
Photo: Heather Erdmann