The 42-year-old is prominent within the city’s lucrative fishing industry and was arrested yesterday in a joint operation between the SA Revenue Service (Sars) and the police’s Commercial Crime Unit. The name of this fraudster is not made public as he is expected to appear in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court. It is told that the company’s website reports commercial trade with the US, Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Japan.
The businessman was previously involved in an “investment” scheme, which was shut down by the Reserve Bank. It is said that he is the second person to be arrested for suspected VAT fraud this month. The first arrest took place in Johannesburg earlier this month. Malerato Sekha, Sars spokeswoman, informed that there are unscrupulous taxpayers, traders, vendors and syndicates that intentionally target the fiscus for extraction by generating false and fraudulent VAT refunds.
Sekha also said that as there is no specific number is attached, VAT refunds ran into billions of rands each year. She added that analysis showed an increase in recent refund claims which were not adequately explained by current economic conditions, or cycles. It was due to this trend that Sars is stepping up its monitoring to combat fraud.
