WINDHOEK – After Secretary to Cabinet and former chairman of the Board of the Social Security Commission (SSC), Frans Kapofi, denied in court that he was aware of Avid Investments or Namangol, more denials have surfaced.
This time, the then manager for accounting at the SSC Daniel Sipopa Ndara told the court he first came to know about Avid Investments when he endorsed a recommendation the manager of corporate of investments, Gideon Mulder, brought to him for the attention of the CEO.
Ndara said at that stage he was acting in the place of Avril Green as the general manager of finance and that it was procedural the general manager of finance should endorse a recommendation for investments. “I signed the report Mulder brought to me as I assumed he had done his due diligence on the investment,” Ndara told Judge Christi Liebenberg in the ongoing trial in the High Court.
The trial involves Paulus Kapia and six others over a botched investment of N$30-million the SSC made with Avid in 2005.
Inez /Gases, Otniel Podewiltz, Sharon Blaauw, Ralph Blaauw, (Retired) Brigadier General Mathias Shiweda and Nico Josea are in the dock with Kapia who was the secretary of the Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) when he was approached to become a director of Avid by Ralph Blaauw.
Josea was the sole shareholder and director of Namangol Investments.
/Gases, Podewiltz and Sharon Blaauw were the other directors of Avid while Shiweda was a shareholder, the court already heard.
Ralph Blaauw on his own admission was the main promoter of the company, which he did with vigour.
Green and Mulder already testified. They both lost their employment with the SSC over the investment with Avid.
Ndara further said that he knew /Gases as the chairperson of Avid and the contact person the SSC had with Avid.
By Roland Routh
He said during May, 2005 he was asked by the CEO to enquire about the investment that had matured. According to him he contacted /Gases on 31 May, 2005 and was informed that the money would only be paid into the account of Avid on 3 June, 2005 and that the SSC would have their investment plus the interest calculated at 14.65 percen five days later on 8 June, 2005.
This did not sit well with him and he organised that /Gases attend a meeting at the office of Green on 7 June, 2005, Ndara told the court.
At the subsequent meeting /Gases merely repeated what she stated in the original correspondence between them on 31 May, 2005 that the money will be in the SSC’s bank account by 8 June, 2005, Ndara stated. But to his knowledge and up to the time he left the SSC the money never turned up in the SSC’s account, Ndara informed the court.
In the meantime the case has been postponed to tomorrow as the State’s next witness, the former minister of gender equality and child welfare, Marlene Mungunda, is apparently hospitalised.