It’s a money story… or a love story… so unlikely, it would tax even the most gullible of brains, writes Carmel Rickard.
How about this for a B-grade movie plot: A bikini model with Bond Girl looks finds herself in trouble with the tax authorities.
She’s drawn into a series of sensational court cases about the source of her suddenly luxurious lifestyle.
She claims that a mysterious benefactor, met at a far distant secret and ultra-exclusive holiday island, gave her these fabulous assets – but no one can prove he even exists.
In this hypothetical movie, we might expect that, after a series of adventures, some hero would force the benefactor into the open.
Her name cleared, she and a suitably delicious young blood would roar into the Seychellois sunset in a pulse-racing convertible.
But this is reality: Candice-Jean van der Merwe’s problems with Sars are only just starting – and there’s neither a hero nor a mysterious benefactor in sight.
Sars and Candice-Jean’s father, Gary, are strong-arming each other because of his more than R200 million tax bill, so far, unpaid. According to the tax authorities, much of his wealth was the result of VAT fraud that they are still investigating.
Now Sars is also giving her assets in-depth examination, suspecting her sudden change in fortune is simply a strategy for her father to hide his wealth. Despite his obviously luxurious lifestyle, he has submitted a zero tax return since 2007.
Though he might be a financial strategist, his legal strategy leaves much to be desired: In the latest of a series of legal disputes about his family’s affairs, the Supreme Court of Appeal refused to condone her very late filing of a challenge to an earlier high court decision.
Late filing is something that could have been avoided. Now she has not only lost her condonation application – and with it a chance to challenge an earlier high court order against her – she has also been saddled with a punitive costs order.
All of which suggests she’s getting less than fabulous legal advice.
Despite all these problems, Candice-Jean is strikingly upbeat, at least on social media. “Loving the journey and breaking the rules” proclaims her provocative Instagram site.
She says she was invited to travel to the Seychelles to work at the Plantation Club on Mahe Island, a private resort frequented by some of the richest people in the world, wanting to holiday in total privacy.
Their identity is kept a secret and models like Candice-Jean, flown in from all over the world “to lend a sense of glamour and exclusivity” to events, are forbidden to disclose the identity of anyone they meet at the resort.
Patrons found she had “a very engaging personality” and she was invited several times.
During one trip, she and her new friends talked about the kind of cars she liked and her dream car, an Audi R8 Spyder.
Wonderful to relate, when she returned to Cape Town after that trip, she was called by an Audi salesman who said she should collect her dream car, paid for and registered in her name.
Her mystery benefactor further arranged two new cellphones and another luxury vehicle, as well as R143m, much of which is now administered by her father, to buy the house of her dreams.
As the appeal court put it: “Lady Luck suddenly smiled.”
Candice-Jean says the court ought to accept her version: Sars had not shaken her claim that the luxuries were a gift. There was no indication that the transactions were not genuine or that the funds “were anyone else’s, let alone” her father’s.
But the judges aren’t convinced and have frozen her assets so she can’t sell the house or cars.
The Western Cape High Court says the probability of a young model suddenly enjoying the serial generosity of a benefactor on this unparalleled scale was “far-fetched and implausible”.
The court also noted there was no confirmatory affidavit by the modelling agency that had allegedly obtained the contract for her, nor any proper explanation for why she could not disclose details of who she met during the Seychelles assignment and why that person had “fulfilled her dreams”.
Her denials of Sars’s claims were “bald”, “uncreditworthy” and “palpably implausible”.
The appeal court has now added its own disquiet, saying her father’s close relationship with her, “coupled with the extraordinary wealth which she suddenly acquired, requires investigation”, and it was imperative that a curator investigate how and why the funds came to be put at her father’s disposal.
* Carmel Rickard is a legal affairs specialist. Email [email protected] or visit www.tradingplaces2night.co.za
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star