Adeosun Advocates Global Criminalisation Of Tax Evasion, Malpractices By Multinationals
BY COBHAM NSA, ABUJA – Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun says criminalising tax malpractices by multi-national corporations will provide fat revenue streams and engender sustainable socio-economic development in Nigeria and other developing countries.
This is as the Minster stated that the Federal Government has commenced work on developing Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) framework as part of its anti-graft war in the country.
Speaking at the Platform for Collaboration on Tax (PCT) Conference that ended over the weekend in New York, Adeosun said aside the UWOs that will help in tracking ill-gotten wealth by individuals and organisations, it is imperative to designate harmful tax activities as ‘foreign corrupt practices’.
She said such global partnership will help check the multi-national firms and make them more responsible to the needs of their operating environment and the people.
Mrs Adeosun said Nigeria, like many other development nations, is hugely drained by illicit financial flows due to tax evasion and obvious corruption perpetrated by big foreign businesses.
The Minister maintained that the problem will be easily tackled if global bodies, including the OECD, World Bank, IMF and United Nations among others, support calls to criminalise tax avoidance and related actions by the multi-nationals as fraudulent practices.
According to her, “There is absolute need for a complete understanding of how these Multi-national Corporations (MNCs) behave in Nigeria and developing countries; many operate a completely different standard in Africa to what obtains globally.”
Adeosun regretted that slack legislative processes have unfortunately aided defaulting MNCs in their illegal activities, noting that for their selfishness, these foreign outfits readily circumvent right processes in countries where their businesses regularly rake in massive revenues.
Explaining that Nigeria is currently exploring options to prosecute such firms in their own countries, Adeosun said criminalising tax offences would support such efforts at bringing to book erring multi-nationals.
The Minister, who also frowned at growing cases of Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) across Africa, said the President Buhari’s administration, has already taken ‘strong action and was determined to reverse their impact’ on the nation’s economy.
She said besides a number of measures being taken internally, the federal government has embraced existing international initiatives to tackle the problem, adding that the, “Internal measures, include tightening financial controls and surveillance, adoption of the National Tax Policy (NTP) with its commitment to regular revisions of tax laws and the ongoing tax amnesty programme, the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS).”
Mrs Adeosun said Nigeria would exploit every available opportunity to improve its revenue generation and tax collection, just as she applauded the United Nations for amplifying the evils of Illicit Financial Flows and forces with other bodies to garner global coalition in the fight against IFF.
The Minister described IFF as a ‘United Nations-sized problem’, assuring that; “The Nigerian Government is taking responsibility for preventing illicit flows but the range of measures used and the sheer volumes are such that the recipient nations must also take measures to discourage the flows into their countries by asking more questions.”
Adeosun commended the United Kingdom (UK) government’s initiative on Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) and called on more countries join the campaign to stamp out IFF globally.
The PCT is an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and United Nations.
