King and SARS in the 'end game'

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has beefed up its team working on the case of businessman Dave King, chairman of JSE-listed MicroMega.

The team now includes officials who worked on the Krion pyramid scheme case that saw mastermind Marietjie Prinsloo jailed for 25 years.

King faces 322 charges including fraud, money laundering, racketeering and tax evasion, which can mean 15 years in jail.

He has been out on R1-million bail since 2002 and has applied for a permanent stay of execution. Judgment will be handed down in May.

King also faces a tax bill of R2.7-billion, following a Tax Court order last year relating to his offshore entity Ben Nevis.

SARS action on this, including the attachment of offshore assets, is apparently under way.

King's assets, frozen worldwide for a number of years, include a mansion in Sandhurst, a holiday home in Plettenberg Bay, Stellenbosch wine farm Quoin Rock and a stake in Scottish football team Rangers.

"Look, King is King; he'll try any legal avenue. But his options (to stop the expropriation of assets) are extremely limited," said one tax lawyer. "It may still take a while, but the procedures from here on are a mere formality. After all these years, they're finally in the end game."

The Ben Nevis tax bill, for the 1998, 1999 and 2000 years of assessment, relate mainly to the profit of more than R1.3-billion King made through the sale of his shares in then JSE-listed Specialised Outsourcing, a company he founded. The share price tanked after it became known he had quietly sold off most of his stake.

This week, King claimed Judge Brian Southwood had presided in the Ben Nevis case "without the requisite expertise" and had used "inappropriately emotional language" in his findings.

Despite these serious allegations, King did not write to the Judge President to complain or ask for another judge.

In his judgment, Southwood described King as a "glib and shameless liar" whose evidence should not be trusted unless "it is supported by documents or other objective evidence".

In a media statement, King also accused SARS and HSBC, the trustee of Ben Nevis, of making false submissions to court.

"I am currently assessing whether SARS and its officials, and HSBC and its officials, have committed criminal acts in that regard. I also believe the Ben Nevis tax case must be re-opened in light of this flagrant abuse by SARS and the opportunistic response by HSBC."

SARS said in a statement: "The suggestion that SARS has acted in bad faith or even committed an offence is denied."

King also faces a dispute regarding his personal tax, with about R900-million being claimed by SARS. This involves alleged understatement of income. Despite his lavish lifestyle, his income declared to SARS averaged only R80000 a year from 1990 to 2001. In 2000, he even tried to deregister himself as a taxpayer.

In 2008, SARS said King, a Scot who has lived in SA for more than 30 years, had failed to submit tax returns since 2002 or pay income tax due.