Mungo Soggot
A senior banker and two accomplices will be tried in the Germiston regional court next month for fraudulently claiming R45-million in tax rebates for non-existent goods they purported to sell to central African countries.
According to court documents, the syndicate set up a chain of three companies to generate false invoices for hi-tech goods and then applied for VAT rebates. The scheme hinged on a banking contact, the former head of the foreign exchange department at Volkskas Bank’s Randburg branch, who confirmed in writing that the transactions were taking place.
The banker, David Jacobus, was recently granted bail, while the alleged mastermind of the scheme, Haralambos Sferopoulous, is under observation in Sterkfontein hospital after he told the police he was mad.
In an affidavit before the court, a South African Revenue Service investigator says Sferopolous set up three companies expressly to pull off the scheme. Their false invoices totalled more than R135-million between December 1996 and March 1998.
“There were only bogus paper transactions made to deceive and defraud the fiscus. The applicant relied on certain confirmations from Absa in making these payments,” the affidavit says. One of the companies, Cord- Less-Fones, also paid the Receiver of Revenue R1,2-million with a “stolen or fraudulent” Absa cheque.
The papers say that the main company, Zamzar Trading, would send Absa’s written confirmations as “proof” of its claim for the refunds. The papers say that “in a nutshell” the scheme worked as follows: “The first respondent [Zamzar Trading] falsely held out that it purchased imported goods from the Second Respondent [Cord-less fones]. That Cord-less-fones had purchased these goods from the third respondent [Jude Electronics]. Zamzar trading then claimed refunds of input VAT.”
The South African Revenue Service investigator says some of the companies were essentially shells. Michael Maree, says he traced the man recorded as the “public officer” of Zamzar trading, Samuel Pooe, to a “poorly furnished cellar in Crosby, Johannesburg”.
Maree says Pooe had no idea he was the public officer of Zamzar, which he had also never heard of.
According to the papers, the bulk of the proceeds of the scheme were deposited into a Standard Bank account, which was fed almost exclusively with the tax pay-outs.
The papers say that Zamzar Trading is also being investigated by a Zambian bank for a major transaction purporting involve an order from that country’s communications ministry.
The goods that Zamzar Trading purported to sell to what they entered as “Congo/Zaire” were sophisticated telecommunications equipment, which according to Telkom could not be bought in South Africa. However the company had no record of importing these goods.