New Rules in Place on Company Registration

The Attorney General Githu Muigai has gazzetted new rules that will govern applications for registration of Kenyan companies.

These new rules have been included in a revised company registration form where all companies to be registered will have to provide detailed information of their location, specific room and floor of where they are located pus the number of employees in company.

Other details that will be required include the county, town, district, name of building and the plot number where the company’s offices are, post office contact, mobile telephone number and the company’s email address.

The new rules have been put in place so as to curb the existence of shell companies that have been discovered to behind theft of the multi-billion shillings that are public funds. Such companies are usually formed as vehicles for specific financial operations, with no physical location or lists of employees but only exist on paper.

Such companies came to the lime light during National Youth Service (NYS) and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) scandals that were said to have led to losing of huge amounts of publics funds. Their work was to receive funds as existing companies yet they were not in existence.

They are usually used for illegal financial operations such as tax evasion, money laundering, terrorism financing and bribery. The required information on the application forms will be in a position to make all the information on a company easy to access and locate incase it has to be traced.

The added information will enable government entities be in a position to distinguish a company whether it qualifies to be grouped as small or big company, depending with the number of employees available.

Article by Vera Shawiza.