Hawks and SARS arrest 28 people for tax fraud

KANYAMAZANE – A joint operation by the Hawks, SARS and the SAPS resulted in a province- wide raid on income-tax-related fraud.

On Thursday Lowvelder joined the police in their raid of the Department of Education’s Ehlanzeni Regional Office in KaNyamazane.

According to Hawks spokesman Capt Paul Ramaloko, the raid was the result of an investigation started in April 2012 to clamp down on tax fraud through dishonesty relating to income-tax returns, with the total value exceeding R25 million and involving approximately 1 000 taxpayers within the Mpumalanga region.

The suspects had been apparently acting as false tax practitioners and would inflate the deductible income tax of their clients in a bid to increase the tax refund. The practitioner would then take 10 per cent of the refund as their payment.

A total of 36 are suspected of this. Of these 36, 25 were employed at the regional office at KaNyamazane. Following the raid at the department, six of the 25 were arrested, with a suspected leak resulting in eight suspects calling in sick. The other 11 were still unaccounted for on Thursday.

The taxpayers involved were being dealt with through administrative methods. At the time of going to print, Ramaloko said on Monday afternoon that “28 of the 36 suspects have been arrested”.

He said a 19-year-old economics student at the Tshwane University of Technology was among those arrested on Thursday. She was apprehended in Pretoria.

Mpumalanga Education Department spokesman Mr Jasper Zwane said the suspects were not teachers as reported by other media, but officials who worked at the regional office. Ramaloko said they faced charges of fraud and possibly, racketeering. Some had appeared in the KaBokweni, Komatipoort, Bushbuckridge and Nelspruit Magistrate’s courts.

If you have been a victim of this fraud, or suspect an individual of it, call the toll-free SARS hotline on 0800-00-2870