... and seized R12m of illegal goods at border posts
A THREE-POINT plan which the South African Revenue Services(SARS) is currently implementing is making serious inroads into tax evasion and fraud around the country.
VAT fraud and customs fraud head the table of prosecutions initiated by the new SARS unit, and have resulted in millions of rands being recovered, says SARS spokesman Christo Henning.
The establishment of the national special investigation unit was the first part of the plan. Known as the forensic task team, it consists of hired former commercial-branch detectives, attorneys, advocates and forensic experts, all working with veteran tax investigators.
The next step was to bring in a group of Swedish experts, who helped create a situation where groups within the unit now work on individual cases. These teams are empowered to institute criminal charges and recover taxes.
The third phase was to establish a salary structure to compensate the high-powered persons being employed in this manner. According to Henning, the SARS is able to offer salaries not linked to civil service scales, although in the case of many of those employed, further training was still a priority, and the forensic capacity of the unit has still to be widened.
This is a formidable group, says Henning. There are several hundred members of the unit spread around the country, and they seem to be doing better as they go along.
The difference between the new and old investigating units is that cases used to be handed over to the police or the courts. Now they are taken straight through to prosecution and collection.
During March the unit prosecuted 151 cases of VAT fraud, 82 cases of customs fraud and numerous other tax-related frauds. The SARS has also established a joint mobile border police/customs team that has seized goods valued at R12million in recent months.
The unit intends to form an alliance with the department of justice to speed up prosecutions. A special team has also been established to focus on the meat industry, where dealers are evading tax by making cash payments. This has also affected cross-border trading. A short-list of the major defaulters has been drawn up and some traders have already been sequestrated.
By Leonard Neill
