The African Continent loses a whopping $80 billion, annually, to Illicit Financial Flows (IFF), the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has revealed.
Kemi Adeosun The minister disclosed this at the on-going conference of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Platform for Collaboration on Tax in New York, United States of America.
She said that Nigeria accounted for a significant percentage of the illicit financial flows out of Africa, according to a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Yinka Akintunde, yesterday.
The minister said that the IFF was a problem that required urgent global focus and actions towards stopping it. Mrs Adeosun was quoted as saying, “The IFFs are driven by the desire to hide illicit wealth, hide the proceeds away from the public eye and law enforcement agencies and also conceal the ways and means by which illicit wealth was created.
This makes it difficult to trace the associated money flow. “Developing countries, including Nigeria, collect significantly lower levels of tax, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), than wealthier States. This is partly because the income and wealth being created is taken out of the country illegally, without being taxed.”
She added, “Nigeria has adopted the Common Reporting Standards and the Addis Tax initiative aimed at improving the fairness, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of the tax system.
“Furthermore, as part of open government partnership, Nigeria has included in the national action plan a commitment to establish a public register of beneficial owners.
To this end, the Corporate Affairs Commission, the custodian of Nigeria’s company registry, is pursuing relevant amendments to the Companies and Allied Matters Act to comply with global standards
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