The Nugent Commission into tax administration and governance at SARS has been affirmed as the authority on the revenue service – as well as longstanding allegations of a “rogue unit” in its midst – when Judge Pieter Meyer on Wednesday in the Gauteng High Court ruled against local businessman and tax dodger Martin Wingate-Pearse in a more than decade-old tax squabble.
Wingate-Pearse is a shareholder in Carnilinx, a tobacco manufacturing business managed and partly owned by Johannesburg businessman Adriano Mazzotti. Both Mazzotti and Carnilinx were found to be on the wrong side of local tax laws before. Wingate-Pearse and Mazzotti are business partners and family. Another Carnilinx business associate and director, Kyle Phillips, was EFF President Julius Malema’s benefactor when he paid R1-million towards Malema’s tax debt.
Judge Meyer said his allegations cannot be true, because the HRIU unit was only established in 2007 – long after SARS investigated and raised additional tax assessments. Some of Wingate-Pearse’s allegations are also “absurdly wide”, “too generalised” and “vague”. The judge further found Wingate-Pearse “strongly relies” on an affidavit by triple spy and attorney Belinda Walter to support his allegations that SARS “employed illegal intelligence-gathering measures” against him.
Mkhwebane, in contradiction, found the establishment of the HRIU unit was unlawful, that the unit contravened national intelligence provisions, that the unit went “rogue” and that Gordhan was involved in the thick of things. Judge Meyer’s judgment does not make any mention of Mkhwebane’s findings on the SARS investigative unit, which was delivered on 5 July 2019.
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