Staff Reporter
THE 62-year-old Erwin Sprangers, a former realtor from Swakopmund has been sent to jail for eight years.
High Court Judge Eileen Rakow found Sprangers guilty on five counts of theft by conversion and one count of money laundering during the second week of September this year. Sprangers was remanded in custody since the conviction on 11 September.
Judge Rakow sentenced the convicted person to 14 years in jail for the five counts of theft by conversion and for the money laundering charge he received a six-year jail sentence.
Sprangers will serve an effective jail term of eight years after the judge suspended six years of the 14-year theft sentence for five years and ordered that the six-year sentence for money laundering run concurrently with that of the eight-year sentence for theft.
Sprangers was found guilty on a charge that he stole about N$6.8 million from General Francois Olenga who at the time served in the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The general from central Africa paid US$900 000 into the account of Sprangers’s real estate business. The money was supposed to be used for developing two properties in Swakopmund belonging to the general but the convicted person spent it as if it belonged to him.
General Olenga also sued Sprangers in a civil claim. The judge presiding over the civil matter found in favour of the applicant in June last year and ordered Sprangers to pay the equivalent of US$850 000 to General Olenga.
Sprangers and his former wife, Heidi Sprangers, were initially jointly charged with theft and money laundering, but she was acquitted on all charges during November 2019.
