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- President Hage Geingob has been implicated in new allegations of corruption involving the country’s lucrative fishing industry.
- According to a lawyer who allegedly arranged the deal, the Namibian president instructed his partners to embezzle millions from a state-owned fishing company to bribe voters.
- The leader has strenuously denied any involvement in what many consider the country’s biggest corruption scandal since independence.
President Hage Geingob has been implicated in new allegations of corruption involving the country’s lucrative fishing industry.
According to a lawyer who allegedly arranged the deal, the Namibian president instructed his partners to embezzle millions from a state-owned fishing company to bribe voters.
The leader has strenuously denied any involvement in what many consider the country’s biggest corruption scandal since independence.
Namibia’s president has been implicated in new corruption allegations involving the country’s lucrative fishing industry in an investigation published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and The Namibian newspaper.
According to a lawyer who allegedly arranged the deal, President Hage Geingob ordered his close associates to embezzle millions of dollars from a state-owned fishing company to bribe voters at the 2017 congress of the ruling SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) party. . , reports new research published Friday.
The lawyer, who is not appointed by the OCCRP, claims that Hage Geingob, elected president of Namibia in 2014 and re-elected in 2019, allegedly asked James Hatuikulipi, then president of the state-owned Fishcor fishing company, to establish a develop a corporate structure. in order to divert public funds generated by the country’s lucrative fishing resources.
According to bank records analyzed by OCCRP, front companies created by SWAPO representatives transferred $ 4.5 million through this scheme between July 2017 and November 2018.
An attorney affiliated with SWAPO was told that he would receive payments the size of “phone numbers” as fees.
Fishrot scandal
The allegations carry the stench of the so-called Fishrot scandal, originally exposed by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit in association with WikiLeaks and Icelandic public broadcaster RUV, on Geingob’s doorstep.
The country’s charismatic leader has strenuously denied any involvement in what many consider the country’s biggest corruption scandal since its independence in 1990.
In covert footage filmed by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit in 2019, figures close to the President of Namibia, including his personal lawyer Sisa Namandje and the country’s former Minister of Fisheries, Bernhard Esau, were recorded discussing laundering of political contributions to the ruling party. SWAPO.
In the Al Jazeera investigation, Anatomy of a Bribe, former fisheries executive Johannes Stefansson, who denounced the corruption he claims to have facilitated while working on behalf of Icelandic fishing conglomerate Samherji, alleged that his partners, Hatuikulipi and Sacky Shanghala, had used the proceeds from the country’s fishery resources to finance Geingob’s 2014 election campaign.
Former SWAPO Secretary General Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana told Al Jazeera that while “the whole country is talking about Fishrot and corruption … it seems that this message is not getting through. [Geingob and the party leadership]”.
The recently revealed alleged corruption scheme caused Shanghala and Hatuikulipi to take advantage of recent amendments to Namibia’s fishing laws, which Fishrot’s investigation had exposed as the work of Shanghala in collusion with Hatuikulipi, reforming regulations on who could receive quotas. fishing.
The changes to the Marine Resources Law gave then-Minister Esau complete discretion over the terms of the agreement and introduced secrecy clauses.
A holding company, Ndilimani Trust (meaning “dynamite” trust in Oshiwambo, Namibia’s most widely spoken indigenous language) was established and controlled by Shanghala and Hatuikulipi. Ndilimani Trust owned a number of companies active in the country’s fishing industry.
According to a handwritten note by Shanghala, the so-called Project 2017 would see some 700,000 Namibian dollars ($ 50,000) distributed in cash payments from the Ndilimani Trust to various wings and regional centers of the SWAPO party.
Shortly before the 2017 SWAPO congress, Hatuikulipi withdrew 500,000 Namibian dollars ($ 35,000) from one of the front companies used in the fishing agreement. According to a lawyer involved in the deal, the money would be spent to secure voters for Geingob’s re-election as the party’s chosen presidential candidate in the SWAPO congress.
Fish processing factory
A number of companies were reportedly created in 2017 to act as conduits for the revenue generated by the Namibian fishing industry, led by representatives who, according to the SWAPO-affiliated lawyer, were working on behalf of the party’s interests.
One of these proxy companies was African Selection Fishing Namibia, which in January 2017 entered into a public-private joint venture as the majority shareholder with the state-owned Fishcor fishing company, whose president at the time was Hatuikulipi.
The joint venture, proposed by Hatuikulipi and Shanghala, and called Seaflower Pelagic Processing, included plans to build a fish processing factory for Fishcor.
Fishcor bought the land for the proposed factory from Etale Properties, whose shareholders include Curzola Island Investments, a company with shares held by Hatuikulipi, for 160 million Namibian dollars ($ 13 million).
This figure appeared to be double what the director of Curzola Island Investments had paid for the same piece of land two years earlier.
Just when the public-private joint venture was created, Esau awarded Fishcor a very lucrative 15-year contract worth $ 637 million to catch 50,000 tons of horse mackerel per year, a contract illegally awarded without a competitive bidding process.
The government agreed to subsidize any potential losses incurred from failing to capture the full allocated quota, thus allowing the joint venture to seize an additional millions of dollars in public funds, which were then transferred to accounts managed by companies controlled by SWAPO. In August 2018, this arrangement allowed African Selection Fishing Namibia to claim a government grant of close to $ 42 million.
The OCCRP / Namibia investigation also implicates Geingob’s personal attorney, Sisa Namandje. The Namibian Financial Intelligence Center has documented at least 90 million Namibian dollars ($ 6.1 million) that was transited through the trust accounts of the Namandje law firm from 2012 to 2019.
In August 2017, 2.5 million Namibian dollars ($ 185,000) was deposited into the trust account of the Namandje Law Firm. According to an affidavit made by Namandje to the Namibia Anti-Corruption Commission, the money was intended “as a donation for the activities of the SWAPO Congress in 2017”.
Al Jazeera’s investigation, Anatomy of a Bribe, had already identified transfers worth an additional $ 17.5 million Namibian dollars ($ 1.5 million), which were paid by Fishcor to the accounts of Namandje’s law firm. . According to an investigator with the Namibia Anti-Corruption Commission, this money was then deposited into accounts linked to the SWAPO party.
Namandje has repeatedly denied any involvement in money laundering. Hatuikulipi, Shangala and Esau are in jail awaiting trial on charges of money laundering and corruption.
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