South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth has taken the government to court to have the country’s exchange control system declared unconstitutional.

The billionaire wants the High Court in Pretoria to keep aside a levy of over R250 million. This comes as a result of the 10% levy sum he had to pay to get his R4,27 billion assets out of the country in 2009. The SA Reserve Bank is now being asked to repay his money.

But this isn’t all. The first South African in space also wishes to seek an order on the bank’s “closed door policy” that insists the public communicate with it through the intermediation of authorised banks, unconstitutional and invalid.

Shuttleworth holds existing systems in South Africa responsible for him being “forced” out of the country when he emigrated in 2001.  Now living on the Isle of Man, the astronaut has dual citizenship in South Africa and the UK.

Gilbert Marcus, Shuttleworth’s advocate:

One of the founding principles of a parliamentary democracy is that there should be no taxation without representation and that the executive branch of government should not itself be entitled to raise revenue for its operation, but should rather be dependent on the taxing power of Parliament which is democratically accountable to the tax-paying public

[Source: iAfrica]