{"id":4390,"date":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/amabhungane\/stories\/sars-threatens-mg-over-story\/"},"modified":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:00:00","slug":"sars-threatens-mg-over-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/sars-threatens-mg-over-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Sars threatens M&G over story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has threatened to criminally pursue the Mail & Guardian<\/em> for last week\u2019s article\u00a0Sars wars: Moyane\u2019s empire strikes back<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The M&G<\/em> quoted key insiders accusing tax commissioner Tom Moyane and others of grabbing control of a key division dealing with large corporations and wealthy individuals.<\/p>\n

It described claims that Moyane\u2019s second-in-command, Jonas Makwakwa, had previously clashed with executives over his engagements with taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Sars\u2019s lawyer, David Maphakela, demanded a retraction and an apology. He said the M&G<\/em> contravened the Tax Administration Act by \u201cunlawfully disclosing taxpayer information\u201d and that the article was \u201clittered with falsity, inaccuracy, unfairness, distortion and misrepresentation of facts\u201d.<\/p>\n

M&G<\/em> lawyer Dario Milo responded that the article was \u201cclearly in the public interest and its publication was lawful\u201d.<\/p>\n

He invited Sars to answer the M&G<\/em>\u2019s questions, which have been ignored for two weeks, and said \u201cin the circumstances\u201d the paper declined to apologise and retract.<\/p>\n

Maphakela responded: \u201c[The M&G<\/em>\u2019s] … defence of public interest as a panacea to justify the publication, illustrates … [an]unfathomable misdirection of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cOur client will proceed to exercise its rights in law, including civil and criminal proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Got a tip-off for us about this story? Click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>The M&G<\/em> Centre for Investigative Journalism (amaBhungane) produced this story. All views are ours. See www.amabhungane.co.za <\/a> for our stories, activities and funding sources.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sars has threatened to sue the M&G over the publishing of an amaBhungane story that lawyers say was “clearly in the public interest” and “lawful”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}