Botho Molosankwe
JOHANNESBURG: More than a decade’s persistence for justice in a R30 million fraud court case plagued by many difficulties, including an acquittal along the way, has finally paid off for the SA Revenue Service (Sars).
Yesterday, the prosecutor and two investigators involved in the case left the high court in Johannesburg beaming.
This was after Judge Caroline Nicholls sentenced Ivan van der Linde to an effective 15 years in prison for 255 counts of fraud, one of forgery and another of uttering (presenting a forged document to someone), for defrauding Sars of about R30m over eight years.
The outcome was a relief to advocate Marius Oosthuizen, Colonel Percy Ueckermann of the Germiston police and Sars investigator Morne du Toit, who had been working on the case since 2005.
“We persevered. We appealed and went through a long, stressful, difficult time. We were vindicated when the court said he should be charged again. We charged him again and he was convicted,” Oosthuizen said.
Van der Linde, of Vereenig-ing, opened four fake businesses and claimed VAT refunds from Sars from 1997 to 2005 as if those companies were trading.
A qualified accountant, Van der Linde used a Mozambican man living illegally in South Africa as a front in one of the businesses.
He was arrested in 2005 and when the Asset Forfeiture Unit seized his goods, they found the chequebook bearing the Mozambican man’s name with all the pages signed.
This was despite the fact the Mozambican had been dead for three years, Oosthuizen told Cape Times sister publication The Star.
Van der Linde’s trial started in 2005 in the Germiston Magistrate’s Court. But magistrate Hasani Mashimbye acquitted him five years later.
Oosthuizen said he knew Mashimbye had incorrectly applied the law when he acquitted Van der Linde and petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal.
“I knew what the evidence there was, and I knew he should have not been acquitted,” Oosthuizen said.
The team waited for a response from the SCA and got it in 2013, after which they reinstated the case against Van der Linde.
Watching his father being led to the cells to start his 15-year sentence overwhelmed Van der Linde’s son. He went to the dock and hugged him tightly, crying bitterly.