By SYLVESTER MWALE –
THE Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) has submitted before the Lusaka High Court that a list of more than 1,100 former public workers who received K4.2 million as tax refund was flawed.
Lawyers representing 1,138 former Government workers, Nicholas Okware, allegedly received K2.7 million as tax refund from the ZRA using the same list which had ghost employees.
ZRA senior inspector Joe Nyambe said in his affidavits filed in the High Court that the assessment schedules exhibited by the lawyers on the payment of the money could not be relied upon.
More than 3,523 former Government employees sued the ZRA for tax refund amounting to K4,231,308.21.
Lawyers representing 1,138 out of 3,523 are said to have received K2.7 million from ZRA after they successfully sued for tax refund.
But Voluntary Separatees Association of Zambia (VSAZ) disputed the list of names that was paid, prompting the ZRA to do an independent assessment.
Mr Nyambe said that “the assessment schedules exhibited by the plaintiff (lawyers representing the ex-workers) are flawed in many respects and cannot be relied on as a true representation of the plaintiff’s (former workers’) claims.”
The Authority, however, appealed to the Supreme Court. It also deposited the K2.7 million in court to avoid paying interest in an event that the case went in favour of the ex-employees in the Supreme Court.
ZRA had assessed the amount of tax that was overpaid by the former Government workers before remitting the said money to the court where the lawyers collected and disbursed it.
The ex-employees under the VSAZ wrote to ZRA in October this year.
They complained that ZRA had illegally paid K10 million as tax refund to Nicholas Okware, the lawyers who represented some of the workers.
“The list of names he presented and paid for in court was fake and forged,” said Syachoke Simemeza, the general secretary of VSAZ.
“We thought a big organisation like ZRA could have first verified the records with relevant organisations before paying out money to avoid a situation where you are paying wrong people.”
But in his affidavit filed on November 18, 2014, Mr Nyambe stated that ZRA deposited in court K2.7 million, which was part of the K4,231,308.21 claimed by the workers.
The action was taken to avoid interest accruing in an event that the Authority lost the case in the Supreme Court.
Mr Nyambe said out of the 1,138 ex-employees that had made their claims, only 295 had provided documentation on their claim of tax refund while the rest had no evidence.
He said while the assessment schedule by the lawyers showed that there was a total of 1,138, some names were missing on the list while some numbers on the list had no names.
Additionally, the assessment by the lawyers shows that 56 people on the said list shared national registration card numbers while 35 names were appearing twice.