The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has dropped its litigation against renowned author, and investigative journalist, Jacques Pauw.
In late 2017 Sars opened a case against Pauw in the Cape Town High Court, saying he had contravened the Tax Administration Act by publishing confidential information.
His book, The President’s Keepers, alleged a corrupt relationship implicating then President Jacob Zuma, and Sars Commissioner, Tom Moyane.
The book, which was published 2017 went on to become one of the biggest and fastest selling books in South African history. This week Sars sent legal correspondence to the publishing house, NB publishers, saying that the Acting Commissioner Mark Kingon considers the litigation unfortunate.
Pauw says this time around he received a cordial correspondence from Sars, compared to the first one.
“Sars has been one of the main proponents of charging me and entering into civil litigation against me for revealing taxpayers information while they decided this week that they want to drop the litigation and they wrote us a very sweet letter in which they asked us to please accept that it was wrong to charge me and whether we can pay our own legal costs which we decided we will do.”
