Yunus Carrim responds to ex-Sars exec

The chair of parliament’s standing committee on finance, Yunus Carrim, has responded to claims made by former SA Revenue Service (Sars) spokesperson Adrian Lackay in an article published in The Citizen earlier this week.

In a statement yesterday, Carrim said the following. The response has been shortened:

“Mr Adrian Lackay, former Sars spokesperson, keeps claiming that he wrote to the standing committee on finance (SCF) and the joint standing committee on intelligence (JSCI) on Sars mismanagement, under commissioner Tom Moyane, of allegations against the ‘high risk investigation unit’, the so-called ‘rogue intelligence unit’ – and that basically we did nothing.

“It’s simply not true that we did not take up Mr Lackay’s concerns. I do not recall all our exchanges – there were I think at least three over the phone – but several through e-mails, most of which, if not all, I have managed to trace.

“Mr Lackay sent an e-mail to Ms September and me on March 24 at 17:25, I replied to him and Ms September at 18:48 on March 24, and he replied at 18:53, in fact, even expressing his appreciation for my ‘swift response’. I spoke with him over the phone on March 25 and subsequently, including on April 15.

“We also received e-mails from Mr Lackay on March 25 (09:46), March 31 (10:00) and April 15 (13:06). Ms September wrote to Mr Lackay on March 27 (09:36) and April 14 (15:38). To complicate matters, Ms Belinda Walter also wrote to me on April 22 (13:27) to refute some of Mr Lackay’s allegations, and I also spoke with her over the phone.

“In my first, March 24, response to Mr Lackay’s e-mail, I explained to him that after exchanges with Ms September and others, we had developed a ‘complementary division of labour’ between what the JSCI would deal with and what our committee would, but that almost all the issues he raised fell under the JSCI.

“At a committee meeting a representative of the Legal Services Unit explained it was the JSCI that had to deal with the matters raised in Mr Lackay’s correspondence. The ‘division of labour’ between the committees was also raised with the speaker’s office.

“Even if the information that has since emerged in the public domain about Sars management of the ‘rogue intelligence unit’ matter was available in 2015, our committee would still not have been able to hold an open parliamentary inquiry into the allegations about the rogue intelligence unit. It would have required a commission of inquiry with the necessary mandate and expertise to attend to this.

“Mr Lackay is entitled to his view that we could have done more but he’s certainly not entitled to make false claims that we did nothing.” – Citizen reporter