From: Daily Maverick [South Africa]
Five months after alleged Cape underworld kingpin Mark Lifman – currently challenging an almost R400-million tax bill – had met with key players in the spy-ridden tobacco industry in 2013, then Deputy Minister of International Relations, Marius Fransman, wrote to SARS inviting top officials to a “platform” for dialogues between government departments to discuss the “challenges of the illicit tobacco trade”. It is not clear why Fransman, who was also Western Cape ANC Chair at the time, would suddenly be so interested in the tobacco industry which SARS – under former acting Commissioner Ivan Pillay – was investigating. Even more alarming is Pillay’s revelation in his reply that several politicians had approached SARS attempting to strike deals on behalf of tobacco companies and that government departments were being used to further the interests of these companies.
By Marianne Thamm
Then acting Commissioner of SARS, Ivan Pillay, in his April 23, 2014 letter of reply to Fransman’s April 14 unexpected invitation to the revenue service to attend a “platform for dialogues”, expresses his “discomfort with certain aspects which appear to be unfolding in this sector”.
Pillay informs then Minister Fransman that he deems it important to inform him that SARS was at the time “engaged in a dispute with one of the members of TISA [Tobacco Institute of South Africa] with respect to a tax assessment of R800,000,000.00” and that SARS had been “approached no less than at least four occasions, most notably in the past two months, by politicians attempting to represent and ‘deal’ on behalf of certain players currently in dispute with SARS”.
