Sars under attack at CCMA

Former South African Revenue Service (Sars) spokesperson Adrian Lackay continued to paint a picture of a crumbling top structure under its commissioner Tom Moyane at his Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) hearing for constructive dismissal in Johannesburg yesterday.

When Sars’ executive committee was disbanded, Lackay was never informed as to why, which left him unable to answer media queries on the matter, Lackay said.

Lackay testified that when the exco was functionally ended, the meeting happened behind closed doors and involved the top leadership of Sars and was supposed to remain that way, and not be leaked to the media.

“To my knowledge, no investigation was conducted and no attempts were made to try to establish if indeed two senior Sars officials who attended the meeting did in fact speak to the Sunday Times and did disclose verbatim confidential Sars information to a newspaper,” said Lackay.

“Certainly no instruction or request came to myself or to my colleague, Ms [Marika] Muller, to engage the newspaper or the journalists on this issue.”

He also testified there had been no attempt from Moyane to deny or challenge the allegation Sars had been involved in running a brothel “and in some way or form engaged the services of prostitutes”.

Lackay noted he had observed he was steadily being cut out of the loop as Moyane began to make more and more use of Lackay’s deputy, Muller, while ignoring Lackay.

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It was during December 2014 that things between Moyane and Lackay began to come to a head.

“Moyane had decided to suspend Sars deputy Ivan Pillay and group executive of strategy and risk Peter Richer, and said their suspensions should be announced in the form of a statement to the media in his name,” Lackay said.

“This statement was hugely important,” Lackay said, and stated he had not been consulted over it.

“The first word I had of it was a frantic message from Muller, saying: ‘Where are you, all hell about to break loose, I need help’, or something to that effect,” said Lackay.

He added he was shocked at Moyane’s statement that noted Muller was not allowed to alter the statement, and, once cleared with Minister Pravin Gordhan’s office, was to issue it to the media.

Lackay said yesterday neither Moyane nor Muller had ever explained why he had been cut out of the loop and Muller also never explained why he had not been included in the press release regarding Pillay and Richer.

In contrast, when previous Sars commissioner Oupa Magushula resigned under a cloud, Lackay said he had been involved at the highest level in preparing for the media onslaught that followed.

Towards the end of January 2015, Lackay was informed by then chief operating officer Jonas Makwakwa that Luther Labelo would be taking over most of Lackay’s functions as spokesperson – and Lackay was to assist him.

It was when Lackay saw two jobs at Sars being advertised that contained elements of his job description as senior specialist, media liaison, he became “very anxious and uncertain” about his future.

Advocate Wisani Sibuyi for Sars spoke up at this point and said he was prepared to agree the advertisement was for Lackay’s job, but that there would be two positions of the same seniority – however, with different specifications.

This was accepted by CCMA commissioner Joyce Nkopane and Lackay’s legal representative, advocate Paul Pretorius.

During February 2015, Lackay said, Lebelo had taken over most of his work.

The matter continues on Wednesday.