The walls are closing in on the man allegedly at the centre of South Africa’s massive gold and tobacco money laundering machine. Howard ‘Howie’ Baker is scrambling to settle after SARS slapped him with an astronomical R3bn claim and set its eyes on all his local and foreign assets.
SARS is pursuing the notorious alleged money launderer for an astronomical R3-billion tax debt, more than half of which consists of penalties incurred after he – according to SARS – expatriated billions of rands from South Africa without declaring any income. More than a year ago, the taxman had already quietly launched a successful application to provisionally preserve all known and unknown assets Baker might have in South Africa and abroad, as well as a number of properties he allegedly bought in the name of third parties to disguise their true ownershi