Cecillia Nomvume Makaula (58) a company director, Ayanda Peyana (41) a tax practitioner and their business entity appeared before the Mthatha Specialised Commercial Crime Court on 20 June 2024 for allegations of Value Added Tax fraud. Makaula is the sole director of Ntombi Rhadi Trading CC. The suspects were arrested by the Mthatha based Serious Commercial Crimes Investigation of the Hawks on the same day of their court appearance and released on R3000 bail each.

It is alleged that during the period between May 2020 and May 2022, Makaula and Peyana colluded by means of misrepresentation to induce the South African Revenue Services (SARS) to believe that they were entitled to a VAT refund of over R6.1 million. Therefore, the suspects allegedly submitted a fraudulent VAT 201 returns on behalf of the business entity. Subsequent to that, SARS reportedly conducted its internal assessment and picked up "red flags" in the returns submitted for the financial years in question. However, some of the returns were reportedly rejected by SARS and some were allegedly paid to the business entity. The matter was reported to the Mthatha SCCI of the Hawks for probing.

The investigations revealed that the accused had intentionally submitted false vat returns to defraud SARS, where the potential prejudice of an amount of over R6.1 million was nearly suffered. Consequent to that, SARS actually suffered a loss of R4 164.99 in refund to their business entity.

The accused were released on R3000 bail each and the matter was remanded to 31 July 2024 for docket contents.

The Acting Provincial Head of the Hawks, Brigadier Fernando Luis has much - appreciated the determination by the team of the Hawks for the admirable work done during the arrest of suspects who intentionally submitted fraudulent vat returns to SARS.