SARS selling off Covid-19 tenderpreneur’s Lamborghini and Porsches
The South African Revenue Service (Sars) is auctioning off a fleet of luxury vehicles seized from infamous Covid-19 tenderpreneur Hamilton Ndlovu, Sunday Times reports.
Five of Ndlovu’s most valuable cars are going under the hammer after personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts awarded to eight companies owned by or linked to Ndlovu and his wife were found invalid and set aside.
The 19 contracts, worth about R172 million, were awarded by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) in 2020.
However, the National Prosecuting Authority’s Special Investigating Unit (SIU) later found that only around R15 million was used to buy PPE for the NHLS.
The auction is being handled by Park Village Auctions, which has posted the cars on its website.
The most valuable among the vehicles is a Lamborghini Urus, a powerful sports SUV with a starting price of R4.55 million new.
The model on auction has 31,395km on the clock and features a V8 engine, yellow paint wrap, black sports rims, and red leather seats.
Three of Ndlovu’s Porsches — a black 911 Carrera cabriolet, white Cayenne SUV, and black Panamera — and a red Jeep Grande Cherokee are also being auctioned off.
The Cayenne is the only model with an odometer reading over 50,000km.
To participate in the auctions of the five luxury cars, a registration fee of R7,000 and minimum deposit of R50,000 is required. Below are images of the five vehicles.
Lamborghini Urus. Credit: Park Village Auctions
Porsche Cayenne SUV. Credit: Park Village Auctions
Porsche 911 Carrera cabriolet. Credit: Park Village Auctions
Porsche Panamera. Credit: Park Village Auctions
Jeep Grand Cherokee. Credit: Park Village Auctions
Ndlovu became infamous in 2021 after posting a 30-second video on Twitter bragging about the cars, which were worth an estimated combined R11 million.
Following that video, Sars secured an order in the Pretoria High Court to freeze Ndlovu’s bank accounts and seize the cars.
Last year, the SIU’s Special Tribunal also set aside and declared Ndlovu’s companies’ PPE contracts invalid.
It found that Ndlovu had pocketed almost 90% of the contract amounts — around R158 million — and ordered that all his assets be auctioned off or sold to recoup the money.
The cars are unlikely to be auctioned for prices near their original value.
Even if they did, they would account for less than 10% of what Ndlovu owes the NHLS.
Ndlovu has approached the High Court to have the Tribunal’s order overturned.
However, the SIU said that Ndlovu had not disputed the allegations of procurement fraud that had led to the order.
Ndlovu is among the numerous benefactors of corrupt contracts to supply products and services to the government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A long-running probe by the Special Investigating Unit determined that 2,803 of 5,467 health equipment deals worth about R14.3 billion were improper.
The investigation was authorised by President Cyril Ramaphosa in mid-2020 after he asked the Auditor-General (AG) to look into the tenders.
The AG’s report on the issue found that the government failed to implement efficient spending controls over the R500 billion allocated for relief funds.
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