Sars Helps Mpisanes Duck And Dive – Again

The Durban-based tender tycoons get a helping hand from the taxman.

- Jonathan Erasmus

OVER THE PAST EIGHT YEARS, Durban’s infamous bling couple Shauwn and S’bu Mpisane, have tried every conceivable trick to outwit the taxman – from bribing officials and hiding assets, to frivolous court actions – all to stall for time. And it would appear that SARS has been only too keen to help them along.

As previously reported in Noseweek, (noses 103; 125; 150; 195; 204; 205; 208; 209; 211; 213 & 233) SARS has already tried to help the Mpisanes out of trouble by scrapping a criminal investigation and waiving massive tax debt through the swish of a pen in unofficial meetings.

First, in March 2009 Jonas Makwakwa, notorious former Chief Officer at SARS, illegally knocked R13 million off their then R33m tax bill. That was later reversed. Then in 2011/12 Shauwn Mpisane, along with her company Zikhulise Cleaning Maintenance and Transport CC, faced 119 criminal charges including forgery, tax fraud and the under-declaration of VAT where SARS was the complainant. But the taxman made a U-turn in 2013, using what would later be proven as false allegations levelled by the Mpisanes against the lead State prosecutor in the case, Meera Naidu, as a reason to no longer support the prosecution.

The man who took that decision was none other than former SARS head of tax and customs investigations, Gene Ravele (nose233) who told then head of the NPA Nomgcobo Jiba, KwaZulu-Natal's Director of Prosecutions Moipone Noko and the national director of the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit, Lawrence Mrwebi, that “the trial has been rendered unfair”; that “justice will best be served to stop the prosecution” and that “there is no hope of a successful prosecution”.