Soldier to pay for corruption

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A SCAM in which a Namibian Defence Force member used a promise of employment in the military to solicit payment from two people has landed him with a conviction on corruption charges and a fine of N$4 000.

Magistrate John Sindano convicted the soldier, Alfeus Phillipus (32), in the Windhoek Magistrate's Court on Thursday on two counts of corruptly receiving gratification as an inducement. Although Phillipus pleaded not guilty to the charges last month, he ended up admitting last week that he solicited payments from two women by promising that he could arrange employment in the NDF for them, and that he then used the money for his own benefit.

It was “just a mistake” that he made when he solicited the bribes, Phillipus told the magistrate. “I do not know what came in my mind,” he said.

After finding Phillipus guilty on the two charges under the Anti-Corruption Act, Magistrate Sindano sentenced him to 12 months' imprisonment or a fine of N$4 000.

The magistrate told Phillipus that it was regarded as aggravating that he targeted two vulnerable women who were trying to make ends meet, and that two years passed before he paid back the money that the two women had given to him under the illusion that he would arrange employment for them in the NDF.

Each of the two women paid N$1 000 to Phillipus during the period of June to July 2012.

The first woman, Esther Shepane, testified that she was selling kapana when Phillipus approached her with an offer that if she paid him N$3 000 he could get her employed in a vacant position at the NDF. After negotiating his asking price down to N$1 000, she managed to scrape money together by borrowing it from relatives, before she handed over N$1 000 to Phillipus, she said.

When she contacted him again about two weeks later, having heard nothing from him in the meantime, he told her that the NDF needed more people that it could recruit, she said. She then told a friend about Phillipus, and her friend later also paid N$1 000 to him to supposedly secure employment in the NDF, Shepane said.

The two women testified that they were told they would be employed as cleaners after they had paid the money to Phillipus. The employment never happened, though.

They also told the court that in July this year, after they had been notified that they were required to testify in court, Phillipus paid back the money that each of them had given to him.

With the sentencing Magistrate Sindano commented that the only reasonable inference he could draw was that Phillipus refunded the money, two years after he had received and used it, only when he realised that his trial would be proceeding after all.

Phillipus was not represented by a defence lawyer during his trial. The prosecution was conducted by Henry Muhongo.