"SARS has received a complaint. There is certainly interest in the scheme as well as in [Cobus] Kellermann."
The matter came to a head on Monday when Kellermann, a Cape Town asset manager, was linked to "one of the biggest criminal financial enterprises" to date.
READ:Capetonian Kellermann accused as kingpin of R200bn Belvedere Ponzi
Officially, in terms of legislation, SARS did not want to admit to or deny such an investigation.
The financial services commission of Mauritius (FCS) has placed Belvedere Management and two of its funds – Lancelot Global PCC and Four Elements – under the curatorship of PwC.
A Ponzi scheme is a company which attracts investors by means of a promise of high returns – just to end up paying the first investors with the money which subsequent investors put into the scheme.
The murder of a South African asset manager, the crash of various international schemes, fraud of millions of rand and serious conflict of interest are some of the offenses relating to the Belvedere issue, which has been exposed by OffshoreAlert.
OffshoreAlert is an American company, which exposes international investment fraud among other matters.
Kellermann (38), who was a pupil at High School Linden in Johannesburg and later a student at the University of Stellenbosch, manages Belvedere along with Irish David Cosgrove and Mauritian Kenneth Maillard.