Objective is to recover R500-m,
writes Leonard Neill
SEVERAL 'LARGE and well known' South African companies have been involved in round tripping of goods as well as other fraud and are still under investigation by the department of trade and industry, says director-general Alistair Ruiters.
Addressing parliament's standing committee on public accounts last week he said that his department was going all out to recover more than R500 million outstanding from exporters under the now disbanded general export incentive scheme.
More than 90% of claims have been verified from the scheme which ran from 1991 to 1997, he said. Recovery rate had been about 50% with the state attorney handling 80% of the outstanding cases.
Ruiters, who took up his office at the beginning of this year with his major task to clean up lax financial controls in the department, declined to name the outstanding offending companies as court cases were pending against several. The parliamentary committee had wanted a blacklist drawn up of those outstanding, but Ruiters said lawyers had warned against such a step at this stage.
He said court cases were also pending against several motor industry firms that had abused phase four of the local content programme, which was discontinued in 1991.
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