President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has taken its anti-corruption fight to multinational companies operating in the country.
Addressing state house correspondents at the end of Wednesday’s federal executive council meeting, Lai Mohammed, minister of information, said the government had approved the multilateral competent agreement and the exchange of country by country report.
He explained that the report would give government a better grip on tax laws, prevent tax evasions and avoidance by multinational companies.
The minister said government had lost over N1 trillion to tax evasion.
“Where multinational companies operate in more than one country, it is quite easy for them to move profit from one territory to another territory where the tax laws are very favourable to them and what has happened over the years is that the revenue companies have lost a lot of money,” he said.
“As at the last count over N1 trillion has been lost over a period of time and the revenue companies have found that they were losing more money in terms of tax evasion and avoidance than what they were even receiving as grants from multinational agencies.
“So this is a law that provides that if a company like MTN or Nestle for instance, is operating in Nigeria, not only must he file returns on his activities in Nigeria, he must also file returns on his activities in every other country that they are doing business so that you can see from there whether there is any attempt to hide figures.
“Apart from shoring up our finances, I think it is part of the fight against corruption and it also enhances transparency.”
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