He is expected to make his first appearance in the Boksburg Magistrates Court today (October 14), where he will be added as a co-accused for the role he apparently played in the syndicate.
He is expected to apply for bail.
The South African Revenue Services (Sars) said, in a statement, that the suspect is linked to the notorious “Bezuidenhout Group” and was arrested by the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) and Sars, in their continuing investigation into the illicit gold industry.
The “Bezuidenhout Group” is an alleged illicit gold industry syndicate which was in the news earlier this year, when five of its members were arrested on charges of racketeering, money laundering, serious tax offences and offences relating to the Precious Metals Act and Second Hand Goods Act.
The case was subsequently postponed to October 30, for further investigation.
“The Bezuidenhout Group had allegedly fabricated over 16 000 fraudulent invoices to reflect purchases of secondhand gold jewellery amounting to R442-million,” said Sars in the statement.
“These fictitious purchases were used in claiming a fraudulent 14 per cent national VAT input over the period of 2010 to 2012, in addition to also understating their sales during the same period.”
Sars said it had suffered an actual prejudice in excess of R50-m due to this scheme.
“Since the arrest of the five accused, further investigations uncovered additional suspects who participated in various roles in the syndicate, from funding the scheme to smelting of illegal gold and fabricating documents by masking the illegal gold as secondhand jewellery in order to facilitate the illegal gold into the legitimate gold trade.”
The latest arrest follows two arrests on Friday, October 9, of members of an illicit gold syndicate using the same modus operandi, in which Sars was defrauded of over R5-m in VAT.
The two accused were granted bail of R50 000 each in the Nigel Magistrate Court and the matter was postponed to November 3.
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