WINDHOEK - Bank Windhoek is asking the Windhoek High Court to condone their late filing of an application to protect their interests in an application by the Prosecutor-General to have three erven and two vehicles forfeited to the State.

Deputy Judge President Hosea Angula reserved his ruling on the condonations application to May 29 after hearing arguments from Loide Angula of the PG’s office and Mercy Kuzeeko from Dr Weder, Kauta and Hoveka for the bank.

The bank has requested the High Court to protect its interests in the erven, namely, Erf 345 Omeya in the Windhoek district and erven 2325 and 2326 in the Okahandja district held in the name of 43-year-old Mervin Gay Veuanisa Kozonguizi.
Kozonguizi is accused of siphoning off millions of dollars from two deceased estates and the PG is asserting the three erven was bought with the proceeds of organised crime.

She already got a preservation order for the properties as well as for a Jeep Cherokee and a Volvo 40 on October 25 last year and is now in the process of applying for an order to sell the properties and pay the proceeds into the Asset Recovery Fund.

In the indictment, the state alleges during the period from September 19, 2014 to August 2015 Kozonguizi stole N$6.4 million from the estate of the late Gustav Kandjambi Tjiuiju that he was administering. 
And that between December, 03, 2015 and June, 2016, Kozonguizi stole N$1 million from the estate of the late Dorothia Yolandi Beukes. 

According to the indictment, Kozonguizi first bought a Ford Ranger pick-up for N$454 000 at the end of September 2015 – eleven days after N$7.9 million raised from the sale of a farm owned by the late Tjiuiju had been paid into the personal bank account of Kozonguizi and a plot of land at Omeya south of Windhoek, for which he paid N$620 000 about two and a half weeks after the money from the farm sale had landed in his account.

It is further alleged that in February 2015 Kozonguizi again dipped into the money allegedly stolen from Tjiuiju’s estate to buy land at Okahandja for N$2.1 million.

The state is also charging that on December, 04, 2015, a day after he received N$1-million that was supposed to be distributed to the heirs of the late Beukes, Kozonguizi allegedly used N$420 000 of that money to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee vehicle.

He faces 16 charges of money laundering based on allegations that he used the money stolen from the two estates to make payments to other people and buy cars and properties for himself.
It is the properties and cars that are now the objects in the forfeiture application.

Bank Windhoek is saying they advanced Kozonguizi various loans with the erven as collateral and should they not receive protection from the court thy stand to be severely prejudiced.

The PG has conceded the forfeiture order can be structured as such that it excludes the interests of the bank. Kozonguizi is not opposing the forfeiture order.
He has to make his first pre-trial appearance in the High Court on 20 September this year.