Treasury Deputy Director-General, Ismail Momonait says suspended SARS Commissioner, Tom Moyane, went ahead with issuing staff bonus payments without the approval of the Finance minister, which had been the practice in previous years.
In the 2016/17 financial year, the Auditor-General had found that bonus payments were made despite the fact that SARS had failed to meet its reported target by R300 million.
SARS had overstated its target collections based on non-revenue collections, such as collections in UIF.
Momonait has testified before the SARS inquiry in Pretoria.
“Clearly the Commissioner is too powerful. The SARS Acts written where everything vests in the Commissioner, the SARS structure, the bonuses etc… and even when the Auditor General found that the bonuses payments were irregular, I think he found that was the practice previously between the Minister and the Commissioner, and in this case it was just went ahead without getting the approval of Minister Gordhan at the time. The Commissioner had his own legal opinion and he wanted to take even the Auditor-general to court.”
