Galahad MD gets 5yrs

2003-05-09 12:43

Pretoria - Grant Ramsay, managing director of audit firm Galahad Business Solutions, was sent to jail, for five years in effect, on Friday for fraud and contraventions of the Income Tax Act involving about R178m.

Another five years' imprisonment was suspended.

Under a plea bargain with the State, Ramsay pleaded guilty to all the charges against him.

He is expected to be the main State witness in the prosecution of a network of officials from companies including financial services firm Tigon and telecommunications group Shawcell.

In an affidavit handed to the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court at his first appearance last month, Ramsay said "literally hundreds of millions of rands" were involved in the scheme.

Officials of the companies, as well as one of Ramsay's Galahad colleagues and a former SA Revenue Service employee (Sars), have been arrested on various charges over the past few months.

Ramsay admitted he created fictitious assessed tax losses or financial statements for 16 companies with the purpose of evading tax.

He was also convicted on the fraud charge. This entailed his misappropriation of R638 529 which the company Europoint Cellular - whose bookkeeping he did - gave to him as cheques for Sars for VAT.

He then submitted false VAT returns to Sars, thus enabling Europoint Cellular to reclaim refunds totalling R1.14m. The money was paid into the company's account electronically, and when it gave him cheques for this amount to return to Sars, Ramsay stoles these as well.

- SAPA