Africa-Press – Namibia. TWO appeals emanating from the Fishrot fishing quotas fraud and corruption case are now on their way to the Supreme Court.
This is after judge Shafimana Ueitele announced in the Windhoek High Court on Friday that he has decided to allow six of the men charged in the case to appeal to the Supreme Court against the judgement in which he dismissed their application for bail at the start of April.
Ueitele gave his ruling a week after Supreme Court appeal judges Sylvester Mainga, Dave Smuts and Elton Hoff decided to permit the state to appeal against the granting of bail to another accused in the case, Ricardo Gustavo, who has been free on bail of N$800 000 since December last year.
Gustavo was granted bail by judge Herman Oosthuizen, who attached a range of conditions and restrictions on Gustavo’s movements to his release from custody.
The six accused given leave to appeal by Ueitele are former attorney general and justice minister Sacky Shanghala, James Hatuikulipi, former National Fishing Corporation of Namibia (Fishcor) chief executive Mike Nghipunya, Pius Mwatelulo, Otneel Shuudifonya and Phillipus Mwapopi.
Shanghala, Hatuikulipi and Mwatelulo have been held in custody since their arrests near the end of November 2019.
Nghipunya has been in custody since February 2020, and Shuudifonya and Mwapopi have been in pretrial detention since December 2020.
In his bail ruling at the start of April, Ueitele concluded that it would not be in the interests of justice to grant bail to the six.
He said given allegations that some of them had been involved in attempts to interfere with the investigation of their case and with evidence in the matter, in his view the administration of justice would be prejudiced if they were to be released on bail.
Ueitele also remarked that the fact that four of the six bail applicants before him have spent more than two years in custody since their arrests did not automatically entitle them to be released on bail.
Lawyers representing the six men have subsequently argued that they should be permitted to appeal to the Supreme Court, as there was a reasonable possibility that the appeal court would come to a different conclusion than the one Ueitele arrived at.
The state is alleging that the six accused denied bail by Ueitele, together with Gustavo, former fisheries and marine resources minister Bernhard Esau and Esau’s son-in-law Tamson Hatuikulipi had been involved in an illegal scheme through which they derived financial benefits amounting to some N$317 million through the use of fishing quotas which supposedly had been allocated “for governmental objectives in the public interest”.
A next pretrial hearing in the matter is scheduled to take place in the Windhoek High Court on 21 September.
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