Prestigious Dale College in King William’s Town has been drawn unwittingly into a dispute over 225 boxes of cigarettes which police confiscated from a storeroom at the school.
The haul was discovered on the premises of Dale College’s primary school two weeks ago.
Police said there had been no arrests in the matter and investigations were continuing.
But businessman Ismael Munga lodged an urgent application in the Grahamstown High Court for the return of the cigarettes, which he said were being stored at the school by arrangement with Dale’s unnamed estate manager.
Munga did not proceed with the court hearing after police released the cigarettes for distribution to shops across the Eastern Cape. According to police spokeswoman Lieutenant Siphokazi Mawisa, the cigarettes – worth R1.8-million – were found at the school after police received a tip-off early last week.
In the court papers, Munga’s attorney Henry van Breda said police did not have a search warrant at the time of the seizure and no criminal offences had been committed.
He said a police detective, a warrant officer Grootboom, had said police had “a moral obligation to remove cigar-ettes from a school”.
Van Breda confirmed yesterday that “after the documents were served on the state attorney, they informed us to collect all the goods on Monday, which we did. They did not oppose our application.”
Dale College referred queries to the school governing body (SGB) treasurer Rupert Fortune, who confirmed the find in a “partly disused storeroom underneath the school’s hall”.
Fortune said they were not sure whether the cigarettes were illegal or not. However, he revealed that, according to information received, the boxes belonged to a local businessman who was also an SGB member of the school.
“At the moment we cannot say why they were kept there as we have not, as the SGB, met with the member to determine why they were there and who had given him permission for this,” said Fortune.
Cape Town-based Caledonian Supermarket’s Ismail Paruk said in the court application that Munga had been a distributor of the company’s cigarettes in the Eastern Cape for the past 10 years.
He said scores of boxes of cigarettes intended for shops around the province were stored at Dale after Munga arranged this with the estate manager at the school.
Mawisa said members of the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa were summoned to the scene and had declared them illegal, a claim which Van Breda emphatically denied.
Mawisa said: “A docket for the contravention of the Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964 was then opened, with the South African Revenue Services’ customs unit.”
At the weekend police also raided a warehouse at Cowell Close in Schoornville where a consignment of allegedly illegal cigarettes worth close to R3-million was discovered.
Munga is one of the accused in a long-running tax fraud case in the East London regional court.
Dale cigarette raid ends in row
The haul was discovered on the premises of Dale College’s primary school two weeks ago.
Police said there had been no arrests in the matter and investigations were continuing.
But businessman Ismael Munga lodged an urgent application in the Grahamstown High Court for the return of the cigarettes, which he said were being stored at the school by arrangement with Dale’s unnamed estate manager.
Munga did not proceed with the court hearing after police released the cigarettes for distribution to shops across the Eastern Cape. According to police spokeswoman Lieutenant Siphokazi Mawisa, the cigarettes – worth R1.8-million – were found at the school after police received a tip-off early last week.
In the court papers, Munga’s attorney Henry van Breda said police did not have a search warrant at the time of the seizure and no criminal offences had been committed.
He said a police detective, a warrant officer Grootboom, had said police had “a moral obligation to remove cigar-ettes from a school”.
Van Breda confirmed yesterday that “after the documents were served on the state attorney, they informed us to collect all the goods on Monday, which we did. They did not oppose our application.”
Dale College referred queries to the school governing body (SGB) treasurer Rupert Fortune, who confirmed the find in a “partly disused storeroom underneath the school’s hall”.
Fortune said they were not sure whether the cigarettes were illegal or not. However, he revealed that, according to information received, the boxes belonged to a local businessman who was also an SGB member of the school.
“At the moment we cannot say why they were kept there as we have not, as the SGB, met with the member to determine why they were there and who had given him permission for this,” said Fortune.
Cape Town-based Caledonian Supermarket’s Ismail Paruk said in the court application that Munga had been a distributor of the company’s cigarettes in the Eastern Cape for the past 10 years.
He said scores of boxes of cigarettes intended for shops around the province were stored at Dale after Munga arranged this with the estate manager at the school.
Mawisa said members of the Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa were summoned to the scene and had declared them illegal, a claim which Van Breda emphatically denied.
Mawisa said: “A docket for the contravention of the Customs and Excise Act 91 of 1964 was then opened, with the South African Revenue Services’ customs unit.”
At the weekend police also raided a warehouse at Cowell Close in Schoornville where a consignment of allegedly illegal cigarettes worth close to R3-million was discovered.
Munga is one of the accused in a long-running tax fraud case in the East London regional court.
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