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Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane at a parliamentary meeting in October 2019.
PHOTO: Jan Gerber, News24
- The public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and SARS clashed in Constitutional Court over the tax records of former President Jacob Zuma.
- The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria ruled that SARS can withhold taxpayer information.
- Mkhwebane had been trying to access Zuma’s tax record since SARS.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Court heard arguments in a battle between Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and the SA Revenue Service (SARS) over former President Jacob Zuma’s tax records.
Business Day reported that Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng had challenged the personal costs order awarded against Mkhwebane by Pretoria High Court Judge Peter Mabuse.
In March, Mabuse ruled that SARS can withhold taxpayer information, Fin24 reported at the time.
Mkhwebane had been trying to access Zuma’s tax records from the tax service.
However, his counterclaim was dismissed with costs.
Mkhwebane was ordered to pay 15% of SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter’s legal costs out of his own pocket.
Mabuse also ruled that tax agency officials can withhold information about taxpayers.
He said Mkhwebane’s powers of subpoena do not extend to taxpayer information.
A ‘series of falsehoods’
This is not the first time that Mkhwebane has been ordered to pay for personal expenses. Last year, the Constitutional Court ruled that Mkhwebane should pay 15% of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) legal fees in the Absa / Bankorp case.
The court found that Mkhwebane had presented a “series of falsehoods” during the SARB’s litigation against its June 2017 report, which recommended that Absa pay 1.2 billion rand of an apartheid-era ransom and that the scope of the SARB will expand to include growth, as reported by Fin24.
According to Business Day, Mabuse used the majority ruling in the SARB case to justify issuing a personal expenses order, saying that Mkhwebane had a “proclivity” to operate outside the bounds of the law.
However, Mogoeng questioned whether the court order in the reserve bank case could justify that Mkhwebane had a “propensity” to act outside the bounds of the law, the publication reported.
Mogoeng was quoted as saying, “What has the judge been reading to show any tendencies, any history of operating outside the bounds of the law? Where did that come from?”
According to the IOL, Mkhwebane has expressed, “extreme disgust with the litany of litigants seeking punitive and personal cost orders against them just because other courts have granted them.”
– Compiled by Jeanette Chabalala
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