Eba Kandovazu
THE employees of beleaguered Fishcor, a state-owned company at the center of a massive fishing quota corruption scandal, are calling on the board members to resign.
The employees, who’ve opted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, approached the law firm, Tjombe Elago Incorporated, to demand that the Acting Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Albert Kawana, as well as the Public Enterprise Minister, Leon Jooste, remove the Directors.
Norman Tjombe, on behalf of the employees, addressed letter to the two ministers in which he demanded for an urgent and immediate review of the past financial statements, including the management accounts.
“Our clients are demanding the immediate lodging of criminal complaints with the Namibian police with the view of investigating whether or not the Directors may be criminally prosecuted for possible failure of their statutory duties as directors. Our clients are further demanding for the urgent and immediate review of minutes of all the meetings of the Board of Directors and of management, the immediate review of all the agreements between Fishcor and any other entity or person, including the agreements, to catch and utilise the fish quotas of Fishcor, operational agreements and consultancy agreements,” Tjombe explained.
Suspended Fishcor’s CEO Mike Nghipunya and the former Board Chairperson, James Hatuikulipi, are amongst the suspects arrested in connection with a widely publicised fishing corruption case, now known as the Fishrot files.
Tjombe added that the employees are demanding for the immediate institution of legal action against persons and entities that may have misappropriated monies of Fishcor and its subsidiaries, including liquidations and sequestration of such entities, for purposes of recovering the misappropriated funds and assets of Fishcor.
“We demand that all employees of Fishcor and its subsidiaries be informed in writing of measures put in place to ensure that the situation has been mitigated and future occurrences of such wanton corruption and fraud is not repeated again,” Tjombe maintained.
Attempts to get a comment from any of the board members proved futile.
The two ministers, Kawana and Jooste, have been given until 15 March to respond to the demands. Failure to do so will result in an urgent High court application, compelling the ministers to take the necessary actions against the Directors of the board.
