Magistrate David Mukuyu on Friday struck the matter of Coenraad Botha and his wife, Zimbabwean national Charlotte Murove from the roll, and declared it finalised. He further ordered their immediate release from detention.
The magistrate did this after he found that the arrests of Botha and Murove were outside the scope of police powers to arrest, according to section 40 of the Criminal Procedure Act. This section gives police officers the right to make arrests under various circumstances. In this instance, however, the magistrate said, the arresting officers had no reasonable suspicion and grounds to make the arrests, as they did it without a valid warrant of arrest.
The couple, through their lawyer Sisa Namandje, instructed by Afrika Jantjies, challenged the arrests of Botha and Murove, and labelled them unlawful. Magistrate Mukuyu agreed with this, and in turn called the arrests “humiliating” and an interference in the right to liberty of the accused persons.
Botha and Murove were arrested on Monday last week at Buitepos near the Botswana/Namibia border after the police allegedly received intelligence that they were planning to flee the country. Their companies, CBI Exchange and Papaya Investments, are under investigation by the police after the Bank of Namibia instituted charges of conducting banking business without authorisation. Mukuyu, however, found that the police did not take the court into their confidence on the authenticity of the alleged intelligence, and did not provide any proof of the couple’s intention to “flee” the country. He said there is no ban on travelling imposed on the couple by any authorised State agency or court. As such, they cannot just be arrested when seen at a border post or airport, for that matter. He further stated that what makes matters even worse is that the arresting officer tried to “squeeze” in fraud, a schedule one offence, to justify the arrests of the two accused. This, he said, was just an afterthought.
The State alleges that Botha and Murove, through their crypto currency business CBI Exchange, received deposits from the public of just more than N$162 million, which they were not authorised to receive. They face 64 charges, including 31 counts of conducting banking business without authorisation, one charge of fraud, 31 counts of money laundering and one count of conducting a Ponzi scheme. It is alleged that they mispresented to investors during the period 2018 and 2022 that they were operating a legitimate business authorised to receive investments from the public, and that such investments would grow with interest, while knowing that they were not authorised to receive any payments from the public.
-rrouth@nepc.com.na