The SA Revenue Service (Sars) has obtained a preservation order against two entities that do business with Eskom and are suspected to have links to a coal smuggling syndicate the tax agency raided in October.
The entities, Manyeleti Consulting and Mogogudi Contractors, are controlled by Solomon Lamola. The tax agency alleges that Lamola, an industrial engineer, has not submitted his personal tax returns since 2011 and owes the fiscus nearly R6m.
Sars says that as the sole director of Manyeleti, he between 2018 and 2022 under-declared the company’s income to it, putting the bill for the offence at R107m.
The tax agency also found that Manyeleti did not pay PAYE and UIF supposedly deducted from its workforce of more than 300, with the PAYE tax prejudice to Sars calculated at R10.8m.
Manyeleti provides specialised industrial cleaning, maintenance, and repair services at certain power stations.
Lamola also failed to submit tax returns for Mogogudi despite “substantial cash flows being received in its bank accounts”.
The receiver of revenue has calculated Mogogudi’s tax liability at R67m. Mogogudi, which provides specialised, non-property-related services for Eskom, has 59 properties registered in its name, 16 of which were acquired in 2019.
Lamola has listed an interest in five properties with only one bonded. With interest and penalties, Sars aims to recoup about R243m from Lamola and his companies.
The tax agency also suspects Lamola to be part of a syndicate linked to fraudulent and corrupt schemes in the transport, sale and export of coal to Eskom and other suppliers.
The link between Lamola and alleged members of the coal smuggling syndicate is a Roodepoort property now occupied by the mother of Lamola’s children.
Search and seizure
Sars established that the Struben Estate property was the listed registered address of Golden Royal Construction, an entity linked to the syndicate.
The tax agency, which conducted a search-and-seizure operation on the property, found that while it was Golden Royal Construction’s registered address, Mogogudi was in fact the registered owner of the Struben property.
“Eskom checks the tax compliance status of suppliers before entering into contracts with them. For both of these suppliers awards were made in 2021 and 2022 and Eskom confirmed their tax compliance status at the time of contracting,” an Eskom spokesperson said.
“Both suppliers [Manyeleti and Mogogudi] are now working for Eskom with contracts in the dust handling and the maintenance environment … Eskom will be in contact with Sars if there are further warranted actions needed.”
The preservation order against Lamola and his enterprises was obtained at end-October, with the businesses now under the care of a curator.
Sars in October announced seizure operations across five provinces targeting coal smugglers. The alleged coal smugglers and their related entities, which Sars accuse of costing the fiscus more than R500m, are said to be active in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and Limpopo.
Sars at the time said it managed to establish links between individuals and related entities and confirmed possible gross contraventions from a tax perspective in terms of non-registration for income tax, VAT and/or PAYE, failure to submit tax returns and under-declaration of income, among other offences.
“The sophisticated network of coal smugglers is suspected to consist of local and foreign nationals. Coal trucks destined for power stations are diverted to designated coal yards, where high-grade coal is replaced with low-grade or substandard product. The high-grade coal is then exported or sold to willing buyers. The low-grade coal is often blended with scrap or other materials and then delivered to power stations,” the agency said at the time.
Attempts to get comment from Lamola failed.
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