Tom Moyane wants to drag Ramaphosa to court over his suspension – report

South African Revenue Services commissioner (Sars) Tom Moyane is reportedly gearing for a legal battle with President Cyril Ramaphosa following his suspension from the tax authority in March.

This after the Presidency on Friday confirmed that disciplinary charges had been served on Moyane this week related to alleged leadership and organisational failures.

The Sunday Times reports that Moyane’s lawyer, Eric Mabuza, said he was challenging the disciplinary charges on the grounds that there was already a predetermined outcome to remove him from his R3.6 million-a-year job.

Moyane claims that during a one-on-one meeting on March 18 at Ramaphosa’s “private home”, the president apparently “shouted” at him and questioned him at length about a R70 million VAT refund paid by Sars to a Gupta-linked company.

It is also alleged that Ramaphosa asked how everything at Sars could be fine “when his [Moyane’s] ‘second-in-command’ Jonas was seen stuffing money into an ATM machine”.

“It is curious that the president could have arrived at a rational decision about the competence or suitability of Mr Moyane in a meeting which only lasted for 30 minutes.

“If anything, it suggests that the president had already made up his mind,” Mabuza told the publication.

Mabuza claims when the commissioner “corrected” Ramaphosa and explained to him that he was the only one in charge of Sars, and that there was no second-in-command, the president dismissed this as beside the point.

Ramaphosa apparently only said one word in response to the Moyane’s insistence that he was in charge at Sars: “Whatever.”

Earlier this year in March, Moyane announced Makwakwa’s resignation, saying he was stepping down for personal reasons and would make all his personal tax statements available for scrutiny.

Makwakwa was suspended and investigated over suspicious payments into his bank account. The payments were red-flagged by the Financial Intelligence Centre in 2016, and Moyane was forced to suspend him after this was reported in the media.

In November last year, Makwakwa was cleared of all charges and given the go-ahead to return to work. However, Opposition parties objected strongly to his reinstatement.

Recently Makwakwa faced fresh allegations of conflict of interest after New Integrated Credit Solutions (NICS) was appointed as debt collectors for Sars. NICS is said to have paid him R600,000.

– Additional reporting African News Agency

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