Malawi Revenue Authority has finally obtained a warrant of arrest for lawyer Sylvester James Ayuba who the body suspects of evading tax, Malawi Gazette has learnt.
Ayuba has been owning and driving a 2019 Toyota Hilux, registration number NS 285 and chassis number AHTFR22G706079074 which is not in MRA system and those of other state agencies.
The tax body impounded the vehicle months ago and asked the lawyer to pay K15 million duty, a verdict which he appealed and got turned down again.
The lawyer has been playing hide and seek with MRA by failing to settle the matter. He has also gone into other clandestine misdeeds, aiding others to evade tax in similar manner.
Sources at MRA say Ayuba has been running a syndicate of tax evaders that facilitates clandestine registration of vehicles either by using incoherent particulars or absconding the duty to pay altogether.
Sources at Lilongwe Police Station say Ayuba’s car was stolen in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province last year in a shootout that claimed a life near a town known as Hoedspruit, some few kilometres from Kruger National Park.
Mpumalanga Police Commissioner, Lieutenant General Semakaleng Manamela, was quoted recently complaining of a rise in vehicle theft in the area which is a transit for carjackers into Eswatini and Mozambique.
Police in Lilongwe were the first to detect Ayuba’s vehicle when he went there to service a client, Ibrahim Suwedi, who had also been picked for using a vehicle which is not registered.
By instinct, one of the officers suggested that they check Ayuba’s car and were shocked to learn that it does not appear anywhere in the Road Traffic Department system.
When Police informed him of his transgressions Ayuba is said to have become violent and profane. He tried to drive out of the premises in defiance but was blocked by officers manning the gates.