Shirin Ismail, a former director of auditing firm Galahad, pleaded guilty in the Johannesburg Commercial Crime Court on Monday to involvement in a scheme to defraud the SA Revenue Service.
Ismail (36) indicated in documents accepted by the court that she assisted police in the arrest of her colleagues, who were allegedly involved in tax fraud and tax evasion involving millions of rands.
Galahad managing director Grant Ramsay was arrested last year on charges of having assisted officials at Tigon and Shawcell in various offences, which included contraventions of the Income Tax Act, the Exchange Control Regulations and various other statutory offences.
Ramsay’s arrest followed that of Sue Bennett, a director of Tigon — a financial services firm — and Tony Hodgkinson, financial director of telecommunications company Shawcell, on similar charges last month.
In December last year, Tigon chief executive and Shawcell chairman Gary Porritt and former SA Revenue Service official Kobus Viljoen were arrested for alleged fraud and income tax contraventions. Ramsay is out on bail of R1-million.
Further evidence in mitigation placed before the court on Monday was that Ismail, who was arrested in November last year, was prepared to assist further and testify against those involved in the scheme.
The prosecutor, advocate Jan Ferreira, told the court that following negotiations between parties, a plea bargain had been entered into. In the plea bargain, Ismail was charged with and admitted to two counts of fraud between March and August of 1998.
The background to the scam was that Ismail and an accomplice fraudulently received tax refunds after filling in IT-12 and IRP-5 forms using names of two taxpayers.
The two received tax refunds totalling R40 000 on behalf of the taxpayers, who did not know their details were being used, and they split the money in half.
”I acted out of greed and not need,” Ismail told the court. She said she paid the money back to SARS plus interest.
In terms of the agreement, magistrate Hein Louw fined Ismail R5 000, alternatively two months in jail, plus a further three years imprisonment, conditionally suspended. Ismail, a divorced mother of two, is reported to be assisting writing a book on tax fraud. – Sapa