A shortage of money prevented a bail application by Teckla Lameck, her business partner and fellow member of Teko Trading CC, Kongo Mokaxwa, and Chinese national Yang Fan, reports The Namibian, quoted by The Zimbabwean today. According to the same report, defence lawyer Sisa Namandje, who is representing all three detained suspects, told Magistrate Gerrit van Pletzen yesterday that whereas his clients’ bail application was supposed to start yesterday, one of them does not have funds to pay for his legal representation at this stage. Teckla Lameck is quoted as commenting on conditions in the female section of Windhook Central Prison that “the winter is bitterly cold and the cells have no hot water or electricity.” She stated in an affidavit that there had been “no contractual duty on Nuctech to inform the Finance Ministry that any sub-contractor had been appointed by Nuctech as an agent”. In an agreement of May 19 2008, Nuctech agreed to pay her company Teko Trading US$12,828 million – the exact same amount that the Finance Ministry had agreed five days earlier to pay Nuctech as a first payment under its agreement with the Chinese company – as a commission on the contract Nuctech and the Finance Ministry had signed.
Another Namibian paper, Informanté, by their own account tried to interview finance minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila by phone, but were told that she was “not a subject of Informanté. I am quite busy now”.
