SARS BATTLE
Christo Wiese distances himself from Tullow tax dispute
Details of tax disputes are usually protected by tax secrecy laws‚ but Wiese’s matter has surfaced in an open court
Shoprite chairman Christo Wiese distanced himself on Thursday from a R3.7bn tax dispute between the UK-listed Tullow Oil and the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Business Day’s sister publication, Financial Mail, published a report on Thursday by investigative journalism team amaBhungane that detailed how Africa’s largest law firm, ENSafrica, had restructured Tullow Oil in a way that allowed R3.7bn in assets to be spirited out of SA. Read the full report here. In court documents, SARS claimed ENS’s restructuring of Tullow was a “sham” and nothing more than “an elaborate scheme intentionally designed to facilitate the evasion of [tax]”. But after that, ENS sold the shell that was left after Tullow’s assets were removed to Wiese’s company Titan. Wiese planned to use the assessed tax loss in that company. SARS is now seeking to claim R217m from Wiese and others, including a former ENS executive, claiming they had “knowingly dissipated” assets from that company to “obstruct the co...
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