Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has revealed that the African Continent loses a whooping $80 billion, annually, to Illicit Financial Flows (IFF).
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.
In a statement signed by the Special Adviser on Media to the minister, Mr. Yinka Akintunde, Adeosun said Nigeria accounted for a significant percentage of the illicit financial flows out Africa.
She stated that the IFF was a problem that required urgent global focus and actions towards stopping it.
According to her, “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.”
Relying on the report of former South African President Mbeki’s High-Level Panel on IFFs, the minister said that the US$80 billion annual IFFs could make a huge development difference in Nigeria and the other country from where the funds flow.
She disclosed that the Nigerian Government had engaged a leading international Asset Tracing and Investigation Agency (Kroll), to trace and track illicit flows and assets.
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