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Businessman Joaquim Alves of Ficksburg in the Free State was this week acquitted of theft, which he was accused of after marching into the local municipal pound in 2019 and retrieving his vehicle bearing a Lesotho number plate.
He maintained that it had been unlawfully seized by customs officers acting for the South African Revenue Service (Sars).
He was also acquitted of defeating and obstructing the administration of justice over the incident.
Alves says he has spent more than R1 million in legal fees on his case against Sars, all over a vehicle that cost R40 000.
Alves’s attorney, Mkhosi Radebe of MC Radebe Attorneys in Pretoria and Bloemfontein, believes Sars has spent several millions of rands in taxpayer money fighting a hopeless case.
"Taxpayers should be asking how Sars is spending their money," he says.
It all started in 2019 when customs officials seized a Nissan Serena station wagon belonging to Alves in Ficksburg.
The vehicle has a Lesotho number plate, and customs officials argued that it was an ‘import’ on which the owner had to pay duties.
Alves argued in vain with the officials that the vehicle was not an import, and that any duties payable on the vehicle would have been paid at the port of entry, Durban.
Alves was furious that the customs officials had seized his vehicle. He promptly went home to grab a spare set of keys and walked into the local municipal pound and retrieved his vehicle. For this, he was charged with theft and defeating and obstructing the administration of justice.
Police arrived at his home on a Friday and arrested him, locking him in a cell for the weekend, to appear before the magistrate the following Monday.
Alves, who has high blood pressure, complained that he might not make it through the weekend, and ended up in hospital.
When the case was heard by the magistrate the following Monday, Radebe was released and Sars was ordered to return his vehicle, which it has yet to do.
What emerged in the course of the various court appearances is that the Sars customs official, Abel Tau, declared himself the owner of the vehicle when signing the disposal order in 2019. This, argued Alves in court, was tantamount to fraud.
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