The South African Revenue Service says it has caught buccaneer capitalist Simon Rudland and his associates managing a transnational plunder network that involves billions in illicit tobacco and gold cash, a vast money laundering racket and involving the...
Based on public information and the current set of court documents, it seems as if Sars’s ace investigators have been quietly dismantling GLTC’s transnational plunder network since at least 2020. Investigators have probed and clawed back staggering amounts of taxes from tobacco smugglers, money launderers, bankers, cash-in-transit companies, gold dealers, clearing agents and refineries.
With each step, Sars built the puzzle of how the illicit tobacco, gold and cash enterprises operate in mutual symbiosis, investigators said in court documents. The Rudland plunder network, as sketched by Sars, had four goals: To make tonnes of illicit money, to wash it until it seemed legit, to shield it from the authorities’ scrutiny and to move it out of the country.
All of the above were illegal earnings. They generated a massive cash turnover, which was utterly useless if it was not introduced into the banking system. Alarmingly, Sars records at least one instance where pilots landed at Lanseria International Airport in Gauteng with bags of cash handed over to the cash-in-transit drivers at the Execujet premises. These cash-in-transit drivers had colourful names, such as “Goofy”, “Snoop” and “Chubby”.
Using both methods, digital money ended up in cash-in-transit companies’ bank accounts. The cash was placed into the formal banking system and mixed with other, legitimate funds. It seems that only one payment — R2 989 979 on 7 September 2016 — detoured through Absa before this, too, made it to GLTC’s Sasfin bank account.
Khan communicated these instructions to the Sasfin officials, who moved the illicit cigarette money from Sasfin’s accounts offshore on the back of fictitious invoices and customs documents, or sometimes no documents at all.
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