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Published on November 18th, 2015
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An investigation reveals that shady eastern European interests appear to have infiltrated the Namibian used car market , reports Brigitte Weidlich

The Namibia Competition Commission (NaCC) has been investigating a foreign company that hosts a popular website marketing used cars in Namibia over allegations of uncompetitive practices.
Local car dealers have complained that they are being held hostage by the operators of the monopolistic website, which is apparently owned and run by Ukrainians, who are allegedly being very selective who may use their website to market vehicles.
The website in question is the prominent www.namcars.net.
Monthly subscription fees of several thousand Namibia dollars per company must be paid into a South African bank account. The Ukrainian company does not charge the over 60 subscribing car dealers value added tax (VAT), as per Namibian law. The physical address of http://www.namcars.
net is a street in Somerset West, in the Western Cape, South Africa. The company was registered in South Africa. However, when searching for the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), the physical address is given as premises on Hosea Kutako Avenue in Windhoek. The business operating from there has a different name and was apparentl the Namibian partner when Namcars started in 2006. The business name also appears on the Namcars website. Upon inquiry, a staff member could only provide a mobile number for Namcars. The number is for Diego Alonso Van Camp. He is involved in the Namcars mother-company, AfricaUA, based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Van Camp is described as being responsible for research and development on the AfricaUA website (www.africaUA.com). Attempts to get hold of through a listed Namibian mobile number, were unsuccessful, as it only rings once before cutting off.
Questions sent to Van Camp’s email address remained unanswered. AfricaUA also operates online used car marketing portals in Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Mauritius and the Philippines.
Interestingly, AfricaUA states on its home-page that it does not have any commercial value. “This website does not carry any commercial value, as it’s only purpose is as a “name servers” for registering domain names,” the statement reads. “All domain names registered by AfricaUA.com do not belong to AfricaUA.com and therefore contain no commercial value towards AfricaUA.
com.” The chief executive officer and founder of AfricaUA is Andrey Bondar, a Ukranian national. One Dmitry Mazuryk is designated as project manager at AfricaUA in the Ukrainian capital. As far as insight could establish, Namcars has no office in Namibia.
According to a local car dealer, Van Camp apparently visited Namibia recently to refresh ties with the website’s subscribers.
Sources close to the Home Affairs Ministry say he allegedly tried several times to obtain a work permit for Namibia, but was apparently unsuccessful.
Local dealers spoken to are full of criticism of the “Russians”, but would only speak on condition of anonymity. “We fear that our business might suffer [if we do not subscribe to the website],” several said.

Blocking And Blogging
Despite paying a hefty monthly subscription fee of N$6,000 to market vehicles and their dealerships, including contact details of sales people, subscribing dealerships are immediately blocked on the website if they“dare” to make use of other online marketing platforms.
This has caused a lot of unhappiness amongst the roughly 60 used car dealers using Namcars.
“Namibia has a free market economy. If I advertise my business first in one newspaper for a while and then in other newspapers, the first newspaper will surely not blot out my contact details in the advertisement,” one frustrated car dealer explained. “With the Namcars website, the email addresses and phone numbers of my business gets blocked when Namcars finds out

Interestingly, AfricaUA states on its home-page that it does not have any commercial value. “This website does not carry any commercial value, as it’s only purpose is as a “name servers” for registering domain names,” the statement reads. “All domain names registered by AfricaUA.com do not belong to AfricaUA.com and therefore contain no commercial value towards AfricaUA. com.”
The chief executive officer and founder of AfricaUA is Andrey Bondar, a Ukranian national. One Dmitry Mazuryk is designated as project manager at AfricaUA in the Ukrainian capital. As far as insight could establish, Namcars has no office in Namibia.
According to a local car dealer, Van Camp apparently visited Namibia recently to refresh ties with the website’s subscribers.
Sources close to the Home Affairs Ministry say he allegedly tried several times to obtain a work permit for Namibia, but was apparently
unsuccessful.
Local dealers spoken to are full of criticism of the “Russians”, but would only speak on condition of anonymity. “We fear that our business might suffer [if we do not subscribe to the website],” several said. Blocking And Blogging Despite paying a hefty monthly subscription fee of N$6,000 to market vehicles and their dealerships, including contact details of sales people, subscribing dealerships are
immediately blocked on the website if they “dare” to make use of other online marketing platforms.
This has caused a lot of unhappiness amongst the roughly 60 used car dealers using Namcars.
“Namibia has a free market economy. If I advertise my business first in one newspaper for a while and then in other newspapers, the first newspaper will surely not blot out my contact details in the advertisement,” one frustrated car dealer explained.
“With the Namcars website, the email addresses and phone numbers of my business gets blocked when Namcars finds out

I also advertise the cars I want to sell on other websites. This is grossly unfair, even the photos of my sales persons are blocked,” he railed.
Doing a spot check, insight found this to be true. When clicking on ‘Details’ of a dealer, a form appears which one must fill in online and send as email to the dealer. “Complete and send the form to the seller, a new page will appear which will show contact details of the seller,” the instruction reads. With “good” dealers, who do not advertise elsewhere online, the photos of smiling sales people and their contact details appear.
Car dealers must log into “Dealer Login” on the Namcars website. Dealer Login appears to be a subsidiary of Namcars.
The logo of Dealer Login is also prominently displayed on AfricaUA’s website.
However, Mazuryk of AfricaUA wrote on the company’s blog two months ago, on 8 September 2015, that nobody was being blocked. “Dealer Login Namibia does not cut any dealer if such dealer advertises outside of [the] Dealer Login network,” he blogged. “The false information which was spread by some of [company name withheld by insight] employees today in the meeting is simply not true,” Mazuryk blogged. “We don’t cut any dealer, and all dealers are currently online regardless whether they
advertise somewhere else or not. The only difference is that for such dealers who advertise on websites outside of Dealer Login network, we don’t show their phone numbers until the user sends the text message and we don’t provide a free website for such dealers.
This is normal practice in any sector: automotive, real estate, accommodation, even goods and commodities, it’s a normal reaction that we try to protect ourselves from dishonest competitors.” Shocked sales people said they wondered how the content of an internal meeting of the mentioned company could have reached Mazuryk in the Ukraine.

Dominance
The blocking method the Namibiancar dealers view as unfair competition.
After complaints from at least two local car dealers – one already lodged a complaint in early 2013 – against Namcars, the Namibia Competition Commission (NaCC) investigated the matter. The NaCC issued an investigation notice on 6 November 2013.
In a document seen by insight, the NaCC wrote on 19 June this year that investigations were completed.
“The investigation related to allegations that Namcars is a dominant undertaking and that it is abusing its dominant position by imposing a policy that prohibits automotive dealers who advertise with Namcars from advertising their used cars on competing websites,” the NaCC wrote in June this year. “Furthermore it was alleged that this policy is harmful, creates barriers to entry and leads to foreclosure as Namcars’ rivals are unable to access the market.” The NaCC found that the company
indeed had a policy of not allowing subscribing dealerships on other websites. In the document of 19 June 2015, the NaCC noted in paragraph 5.2 that “Namcars is considered dominant with over sixty car dealers advertising with them. Although this number seems to fluctuate, Namcars has demonstrated its dominance by behaving independent of its competitors and of its customers. This has been evident how Namcars has given ultimatums to its customers to either only advertise with them or
risk being removed,” the NaCC concluded.
A dominant market position prohibited abuse according to the Competition Act and Namcars was “anti-competitive”, the NaCC concluded.
The NaCC investigation found that due to this behaviour two other online portals (names known to insight) that marketed used cars folded. Another company with a website had difficulty obtaining advertisers as they “indicated the fear of being removed from Namcars if they did business” with that company, the NaCC established.

Tax Evasion
inisght has learnt that the company has been scrutinised by authorities for possible tax evasion.
Some two years ago officials of the Ministry of Finance visited several car dealerships subscribing to Namcars to check if VAT was charged. This was found not to be the case.
Invoices seen by insight show that VAT is still not being charged. Recently the Ministry of Finance was approached to find out if possible steps would be taken against Namcars.
Officials in the Ministry referred to a clause in the Finance Act, which prevents it from providing tax-related information of a taxpayer to other taxpayers. However, it appears that government investigators have been inspecting the Namcars subsidiary Dealer Login and has caused a stir.
Dmitry Mazuryk complained about this on the AfricaUA company blog of 8 September:
“Please stop terrorising Dealer Login, by government officials with unhealthy interest to us. We are so tired of government officials with lack of education in IT sector, but aggressive behaviour and demands of attention, that makes us believe that corruption component is involved in all those audits. Which is bad sign for Namibia, because it’s a sign of third-world country.” Mazuryk continued: “We don’t mind about audits and questionings. All what we ask is to be investigated by qualified people,
who has [sic] at least a basic clue about internet and IT sector in generally, and not demanding from us to teach government representatives for hours, days and years, before they understand the concept.” Insight understands that these apparent unflattering views of “The Russians” of Namibians are another cause of irritation. “Locals get insulted [by them] and even some mudslinging has been going on, also against a big car dealership, which advertised with Namcars,” one dealer told insight.
“Those in the know say there might be a court case lodged against the Russians by the big local company.” The company in question has apparently cancelled its subscription to Namcars.
The Namcars matter featured at an NaCC meeting in late October, insight understands. Asked if it was true that the NaCC wanted to hand over the issue to a law firm with a presence in Europe to investigate further, an NaCC official would neither confirm nor deny. “All I can say is that the Board discussed Namcars, which is a very complex issue. No definite decision was taken, but
research continues,” the NaCC official stated. “How long must we still battle on?” a disgruntled used car dealer asked when hearing about this.

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Lara 11:08 pm on November 18, 2015
Tags: Kyiv ( 34,223 )