An ACC investigator, Carl Cloete, said former fisheries minister Bernard Esau knew about all the transactions involving millions from Fishcor.
Testifying in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court Friday during Esau and his son-in-law Tamson Hatuikulipi’s bail application, Cloete said the minister knows about a plot at Otjiwarongo.
The Otjiwarongo plot came to the focus of the discussion Thursday when Esau’s lawyer Richard Metcalfe said his client had no idea of the property.
Metcalfe told the court that the fugitive lawyer Maren de Klerk who is in a mental institution in South Africa had shown Esau pictures of properties being sold at Otjiwarongo when the former minister went to consult on the drawing up of his will.
Esau, Metcalfe said, went to De Klerk after former justice minister Sacky Shanghala had advised going there.
According to Metcalfe, De Klerk asked Esau if he wanted a property at Otjiwarongo and the former minister is said to have told the lawyer that he did not have money to buy.
Esau’s lawyer said his client was surprised that there was a plot registered in his and wife’s name.
ACC investigator Willem Olivier had said that Esau did not list the Otjiwarongo plot as part of his assets.
Metcalfe, however, said if Esau had known about the plot, he would have offered it to the state as part of his bail application.
In any case, Metcalfe said Esau had no documents about the Otjiwarongo plot.
Already Esau has offered assets worth N$23m and N$50 000 cash so that he can get bail.
“Our client was shocked. He didn’t even know,” Metcalfe told the court.
And Cloete gasped: “Very strange.”
“Surely the ACC should have discerned that our client uses an iCloud email address.”
But Cloete said it was possible the document could have been hand-delivered to Esau or sent by post.
