Tender fraud accused denied bail

Two former Ministers and four others accused of taking bribes to offer fishing rights in Namibia’s biggest corruption scandal spent the New Year in custody after a court dismissed their urgent release application. As previously reported in Legalbrief Today, the suspects are accused of conspiring to receive about $8m in kickbacks from subsidiaries of Iceland’s biggest fishing company, Samherji, to secure quotas. They attempted to have the charges of fraud, laundering and tax evasion dismissed because of faulty process in their arrests, which they argued were unlawful and politically motivated. ‘The Namibian constitution should not become subservient to the public as well as political pressures,’ their South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi had argued at the Windhoek High Court. However, a BusinessLIVE report notes that acting Judge Kobus Miller ruled that the application did not meet the requirements to be heard as an urgent matter. The next hearing is scheduled for 20 February.