The Windhoek High Court will not start today the hearing of Bernhard Esau’s new bail application.
Instead, Esau’s bail application will be rescheduled to begin on 12 December, defense lawyer Richard Metcalfe, who leads Esau’s team, announced yesterday.
Metcalfe stated that the bail hearing had been postponed by Metcalfe because of the recent death of his mother.
Esau and Nigel van Wyk (one of his co-accused) in the Fishrot fishing fraud and corruption case are both applying for bail.
Acting judge David Munsu will consider their applications.
Esau (64) was taken into custody on the 27th of November 2019.
Van Wyk (35) was detained on 14 December 2019 and remains in custody.
Esau and Tamson “Fitty” Hatuikulipi, Esau’s son-in-law, applied to be granted bail at Windhoek Magistrate Court in July 2020.
Their application was rejected. In February 2021, two Windhoek High Court judges dismissed their appeal.
Esau and Hatuikulipi were to file a new bail application at the High Court towards the end of November but didn’t proceed with that step.
Hatuikulipi, however, applied for bail at the High Court again in July.
Munsu is scheduled to hear the closing arguments for that application on Friday.
Van Wyk unsuccessfully applied to be granted bail at Windhoek Magistrate’s Court. However, his application was denied in June 2020.
In September 2020, he appealed against that decision to the Windhoek High Court.
Van Wyk was arrested in December 2019 after he allegedly took documents and computer equipment out of Sacky Shanghala’s house. He is also an accused in the Fishrot trial.
This arrest occurred two and a quarter weeks after Van Wyk was first arrested for allegedly trying stop Anti-Corruption Commission investigators from entering a Omaheke region farm house of his employers, Shanghala, and James Hatuikulipi on 27 November 2019.
Shanghala, Hatuikulipi and other farm workers were taken into custody that day.
Van Wyk faces seven of the 42 charges against him. The 10 men arraigned for the Fishrot case, which concerns the use of Namibian fishingquotas by Icelandic companies, will be tried in the High Court.
Esau is facing 21 out of 42 charges, including racketeering, corruptly utilizing an office or position within a public body in order to receive gratification and fraud, as well as tax evasion and money laundering.
The charges are based upon allegations that Esau, who was fisheries minister, was involved with arrangements to allow Icelandic fishing companies access Namibian fishing quotas. He also allegedly diverted payments for those fishing quotas to himself and co-accused.
The state claims that Esau received financial benefits of at least N$5,4 Million from his participation in the allocation fishing quotas to Samherji, an Icelandic fishing company.
Source: namibian
