Pretoria – Julius Malema is seeking to delay a sequestration case brought against him by the SA Revenue Service (Sars), the High Court in Pretoria heard on Monday.
Malema’s legal team brought an application asking for the matter to be postponed because he wanted to reverse an admission of liability, which he signed last year during negotiations with Sars.
Sars was opposing the application for a postponement.
Nick Maritz, for Sars, argued that Malema had had since April last year to file this application but had done nothing.
He gave a timeline of how Malema’s legal team had failed to file court papers on time, delaying matters.
“All this talk… is all a lot of nonsense in obtaining a delay and since April last year no move was made,” Maritz told the court.
“This withdrawal of admission is not a new point.”
He said Malema raised this point in his answering affidavit on April 17 last year.
There was no argument about the prospect of the application to have the admission set aside being successful, Maritz said.
“He shows no prospect of success in that application,” he said.
“He fails to say why since April last year he’s done nothing to settle this issue.”
Earlier, Dolf Masoma, for Malema, said there were two aspects to his argument to have the case postponed. The first was Malema had a corruption case pending against him. The second was Malema intended to apply to have his admission of liability set aside.
He wanted the sequestration case postponed pending finalisation of these two matters.
Maritz said a pending criminal case was not a reason to grant a postponement.
Malema was not in court.
Masoma argued that if the admission of liability was set aside then an order made in the sequestration case would have to be set aside as well.
According to court documents, Malema owed R16 million plus interest after failing to submit tax returns between 2006 and 2010.
In 2010, Sars contacted Malema about his failure to submit tax returns.
It took Malema 18 months, after many attempts by Sars, to file his outstanding returns.
Malema also failed to register the Ratanang Trust for tax purposes, and Sars had to do this on his behalf. – Sapa