N$4 million Nored fraud heads to court

Home Crime and Courts N$4 million Nored fraud heads to court

Nuusita Ashipala
Ondangwa

The four suspects in the alleged fraud of N$4.7 million fraud at Nored will soon be heading to court, almost two years after the case was opened in November 2015.

Board member Willy Mertens made the revelations at the company’s 15th annual general meeting.
Mertens said the case delayed the signing off of the company’s financial records for 2015 with its auditors and that records for 2016 and 2017 cannot be signed off.

Mertens said the auditors at the time could not sign off the finances of the company, as it had to establish whether the fraud had any impact on the institution’s finances.

At the time the fraud surfaced the alleged kingpin was said to have resigned within 24 hours. The case had been kept under wraps since, with the authorities refusing to comment on the developments.

However, according to well-paced sources, the suspects were reportedly giving electricity vendors more electricity units than they purchased, in a scheme to defraud the company.

In return, the suspects collected the money from the additional units sold. It remains a mystery whether the vendors also benefited from the fraudulent scheme.

“They used to give the vendors extra units, and all they would tell them is that they would come and collect the money once the units have been sold,” said the source. The details of the electricity units given to the vendors would then be deleted from the system.