SARS has acted against Mor­gan Maumela’s mother, Mboneni Maumela, over unpaid taxes of up to R40m as law enforce­ment tight­ens the noose on the fam­ily at the receiv­ing end of dubi­ous state con­tracts.

SARS has slapped Mboneni Maumela with R39.9m in new assess­ments, includ­ing pen­al­ties and interest regard­ing the 2017-23 tax years, reports Business Day.

The tax agency has told Mboneni that it found prima facie evid­ence of fraud.

Mboneni, a high-rank­ing offi­cial in the Limpopo Depart­ment of Health before her retire­ment in 2021, has since launched a legal chal­lenge to SARS’ assess­ment.

The huge tax bill levied against her by SARS raises ser­i­ous con­cerns about her income in the assessed years, based on salar­ies paid to pub­lic ser­vants at her level.

News24 pre­vi­ously repor­ted that Mboneni splashed R30m on two lux­ury Sea Point apart­ments in Cape Town, push­ing the value of the fam­ily’s prop­erty port­fo­lio north of R300m, as dodgy gov­ern­ment tenders swelled their cof­fers.

SARS declined to com­ment on its pur­suit of Mboneni Maumela.

Attempts to get com­ment from Mboneni failed. The invest­ig­a­tion into cor­rup­tion at Tem­bisa Hos­pital by the SIU has uncovered three co-ordin­ated syn­dic­ates respons­ible for the loot­ing of more than R2bn meant for health­care.

Accord­ing to the SIU, the Maumela, Mazib­uko, and X syn­dic­ates were involved, with the Maumela syn­dic­ate linked to alleged under­world enfor­cer Vusimusi ‘Cat’ Mat­lala.

The Maumela syn­dic­ate stands accused of syphon­ing more than R816.5m from Tem­bisa Hos­pital through 1 728 pur­chase orders, bypassing stand­ard pro­cure­ment con­trols, the SIU says.

Full Business Day report