SARS’s so-called rogue unit was not unlawful. That was the finding of retired judge Robert Nugent’s commission of inquiry last year. ‘While the National Strategic Intelligence Act prohibits the covert gathering of certain intelligence, that applies to intelligence concerning threats to the safety of the state, which hardly applies to intelligence relevant to collecting tax,’ reads Judge Nugent’s final report. The judge concludes: ‘I see no reason why SARS was and is not entitled to establish and operate a unit to gather intelligence on the illicit trades, even covertly, within limits.’
But did Judge Nugent get it wrong? Weren’t the establishment and operations of the rogue unit specifically designed to counter the threat to the safety of the state from organised crime that was running riot and sapping countless billions of rands annually from the fiscus? And what were/are those ‘limits’ to what SARS may covertly do? We examine the conundrum.
How did they bring down Scarface? In the 1920s, “The Roaring Twenties”, Mafia boss Al Capone ruled over a reign of terror and lawlessness in Chicago that included gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, bribery, narcotics trafficking, robbery, protection rackets, and murder. The police and FBI – their officers often corrupt and on the take – couldn’t touch him, even when he was the prime suspect in the ordered murder of seven rival Mafia bosses in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.
On 24 October 1931, the crime empire of America’s Public Enemy Number One collapsed when Capone was dispatched for 11 years to Alcatraz, finally nailed by federal Treasury agents for failing to pay his income tax.
So why not use the same tool of tax to combat the global illicit trade, today estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to be running at almost $500 billion annually in counterfeit and pirated goods alone? Forty billion illicit cigarettes are smoked in the Americas and governments in the region are losing an estimated $4.6bn in tax revenue every year due to the illegal tobacco trade.
In South Africa, market research firm Ipsos reported last year that the illegal cigarette trade currently accounts for lost tax revenue running at more than R8bn annually.
From the time Pravin Gordhan was deployed to the SA Revenue Service as assistant commissioner in 1998, the former Umkhonto weSizwe and Operation Vula intelligence boss was determined to plug the loss of these billions to the fiscus. He started with beefing up the SARS intelligence capacity, bringing in as head of Compliance, Risk and Enforcement his old Vula comrade Ivan Pillay. Pillay, in turn, recruited agent RS536, the long-time police spy Johann van Loggerenberg, then attached to the Secret Service.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2019 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2019 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.