KRA Trains Agencies to Combat Tax Offences and Other Financial Crimes

Twenty-Four representatives from various state agencies in Kenya and Africa have commenced a training hosted by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to empower institutions on ways of detecting and combating economic crimes.

The eight-day program on Asset Recovery: Freezing and Seizing Assets Program is aimed at improving the ability of tax and financial crime investigators to detect and combat economic crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, and corruption.

The training seeks to equip participants with key modern skills required to ensure successful asset recovery. This includes the ability to trace transactions through complex financial arrangements and use of sophisticated techniques to identify links between suspects and illicit financial activities and the assets acquired from these activities.

The course will also enable the participant to have an increased awareness of current risks and trends in asset recovery including conviction based and non-conviction-based confiscation, prosecution challenges and best practices among other skills.

The program, which is the third to be held under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Africa Academy for Tax and Financial Crime Investigation, started today 12th November 2018 and ends on 21st November 2018 at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, Nairobi.

Other partners in the training program are the Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Kenyan delegates are drawn from various agencies led by KRA, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), Ministry of Interior and National Coordination, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP), Assets and Recovery Agency, Financial Reporting Centre and Central Bank of Kenya (CBK).

The participants are experts in tax and financial crime investigators, prosecutors, financial analysts, and judicial officers. The training is also steered by an international faculty of senior and experienced tax and other financial crime investigators drawn from the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Portugal.

The course is an important platform to provide a good understanding of the significance of effective cooperation among the agencies and countries represented in combating tax and financial crimes.

Tax evasion, money laundering, and corruption largely affect developing countries and have been cited as the major obstacles to the mobilization of domestic resources to finance development in a sustainable way.

Globally, money laundering is also known to aid terrorism.  In a bid to curb these vices, KRA partnered with OECD to launch the Africa Tax Academy for Tax and Financial Crime Investigations, which kicked off on 26th June 2017.