Progress made in tax boss inquiry, says SARS

The disciplinary process against suspended South African Revenue Service (SARS) executive Jonas Makwakwa is at an “advanced stage”, says SARS spokesman Sandile Memela.

Makwakwa was suspended for making “suspicious and unusual” transactions totalling R1.2m. These were in the form of unexplained cash deposits and bank transfers to his account between 2010 and 2016.

Deposits of R450,200 were also made in December 2015 into the bank account of Makwakwa’s girlfriend, KellyAnn Elskie, a SARS employee who was also suspended.

The process of dealing with the alleged irregularities committed by Makwakwa, who is chief officer for business and individual tax at SARS, has taken an extraordinarily long time — almost a year — during which he has been on full salary while under suspension.

Contributing to the long suspension was the lengthy investigation by legal firm Hogan Lovells into the alleged irregularities. This was finished earlier in 2017.

Memela said the disciplinary hearing was under way, but SARS was “not in a position to disclose more than what has been publicly disclosed to date”. It was “important to note that as SARS, we are dictated to by the laws of this country to respect employees’ rights, which include Mr Makwakwa’s”.

SARS commissioner Tom Moyane received a report from the Financial Intelligence Centre in May 2016, detailing the alleged unusual and suspicious transactions in Makwakwa’s bank account, but suspended Makwakwa, his second in command, only in September 2016 after disclosures about the transactions appeared in the Sunday Times.

Moyane, who has been urged several times by Parliament’s standing committee on finance to hasten the process of dealing with Makwakwa, has insisted throughout that he has followed due process.