Taxman cleans Guma of over P33m
Sharon Mathala | Friday November 25, 2016 18:00
After a High Court ruling against the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) a fortnight ago, Mmegi has it in good authority that the Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) has now instructed Guma to pay all tax owed. According to official documents, although Guma won his battle against the corruption body, he allegedly still owed the tax authority about P33 million.
Mmegi has learnt this week that BURS contacted his bankers, Standard Chartered to transfer the owed millions from Guma’s business account to the tax agency’s.
Guma refused to comment on the matter. “I do not discuss personal matters with the media,” he said. In essence, Guma won the case against DCEC, but not BURS. “Remember those are two different bodies who have different mandates,” said a source this week.
He stated that while DCEC investigations against Guma and his company was ongoing, so were the BURS ones.
“The High Court ruling was solely based on the DCEC matter. He also had another tax issue,” an insider explained.
Earlier this month, Gaborone High Court judge, Singh Walia ruled that there was no substance in continuing to freeze the company accounts of Guma and his then business partner, Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development (MYESCD), Thapelo Olopeng.
Walia said it was unfair to deny the pair their rights on the basis of unsubstantiated threats.
“The courts would be committing a grave injustice if they were to make interim orders to deprive a person of any of his rights, constitutional or otherwise, on the basis only of unsubstantiated threats or possibilities of some future unspecified criminal proceedings,” he said when he ruled.
According to papers before court previously seen by Mmegi, Standard Chartered Bank said they had received a letter from the Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA) advising them that the agency had reasonable grounds to suspect that Guma’s company account was involved in a commission of a financial offence and directed to halt any debit transactions relating to the said account. Then, the bank said from the instruction of the FIA they blocked Guma’s account on May 28, 2015 without his knowledge. It was reported that Guma then visited the bank on May 29, 2015 around 1:30pm and attempted to make a transaction, where he was informed a day later, that the bank had received instruction from the authorities to freeze his account.
On June 9, 2015, the bank received an order from the Village Magistrate Court, signed by chief magistrate Linah Oahile-Mokibe to freeze Guma’s company account.
Everything was transferred into a margin account and then frozen until the determination of the court. From the account a total of P33, 215, 908 unpaid income tax and value added tax from Guma and a total sum of P975, 723.39 unpaid income tax from Olopeng were at issue. The account has been frozen since then, that is until the High Court’s ruling a fortnight ago. Previously in his affidavit, Guma explained the huge sum of monies in his account were from a tender Sinohydro engaged him on in 2013. The Chinese company, engaged Guma for the construction of the Kariba South Power Extension Project, the multi-million dollar Zimbabwe project that was commissioned in 2014.
BURS public relations officer, Refilwe Moonwa refused to comment saying “we do not normally comment on our client’s tax issues, but I will take up the matter with the Commissioner”.
She asked that Mmegi sends a questionnaire, which she did not respond to by press time.
Standard Chartered Bank also refused to be drawn into the matter. “We do not discuss with the media, or anybody else matters involving our dealings with our clients. So we cannot comment on that,” the bank’s head of corporate affairs, Tumie Ramsden said.