The Cape Town headquarters of the South African Revenue Service is seen in this picture taken March 1, 2016.The Cape Town headquarters of the South African Revenue Service is seen in this picture taken March 1, 2016.official Khutso Hlongwane is expected back in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court today.Forty-year-old Hlongwane allegedly defrauded the revenue service between 2007 and 2015.
The National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Lomka Mahajana says: “A former SARS official Khutso Meloreng Hlongwane will appear at Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court after her representations made to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the National Director of Public Prosecutions to have her charges withdrawn were unsuccessful. Hlongwane faces 52 counts of fraud, worth over R5 million for defrauding SARS from July 2007 until September 2015.
R44 million of the money has already been recovered through an investigation in conjunction with SARS. An investigation by SARS, between 2013 and 2016, identified extensive value-added tax fraud with Small and Medium Enterprises sectors registered as VAT merchants. The syndicate involves more than twenty individuals and various companies. Most of the fraudulent invoices were uploaded from the SARS branch in Randfontein, west of Johannesburg, where some of the implicated suspects were based.