Taxgate!!! NRA, Airline Operators In Billions Rip-Off

The no-nonsense Auditor General of Sierra Leone, Lara Taylor Pearce has exposed how the Sierra Leone’s Revenue Generation Body, National Revenue Authority or NRA is conniving with airline operators in the country to swindle the state of billions of Leones

The auditor report revealed how NRA self-righteously decided to split payment made to them in bulk by the airline operators.

“Kenya Airways made a bulk payment of Le 517,762,786 without specifying how the payments should be apportioned. However, the payment was split equally over a nine-month period by NRA officers on the assumption that Le 57,529,198 was the tax paid for each month,” the report states.

This, according to the report cannot be explained by NRA and  how it determined the splitting particularly when comparing  the monthly payment arising from the splitting to other monthly payments (October Le245,204,978 and November Le 218,925,325).

“We found that the splitting done by the NRA was unreasonable,” the auditor concluded.

Similar incident was also observed by the auditor on Air France.

“Air France made a bulk FTT payment of Le280,963,495 without actually specifying how the payments should be apportioned. The payment was split equally for nine months by NRA officers on the assumption that Le 31,218,166 was the tax paid for each month.”

The report furthered that the basis for the splitting cannot be determined especially when comparing the monthly payments arising from the splitting with other monthly payments (October Le 93,880,144; November Le 114,770,483).

“We found out that the splitting done by the NRA was unreasonable,” the Auditor further concluded

According to the report the Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority Haja Kallah Kamara should explain the basis for the splitting and the difference between the monthly payment which resulted from the splitting and the, much larger, monthly payments made by the airlines before the splitting arrangement was put in place.

Also the report noted that the exchange rate used by airlines differs from the official Bank of Sierra Leone foreign exchange rate as of the date of the transactions.

For which the report revealed that, “there is an under payment of FTT of Le 124,634,274 by Royal Air Maroc and Le29,288,409 by S N Brussels Airlines.”

The report orders Commissioner General Haja Kallah Kamara to ensure that Airlines use the official bank of Sierra Leone exchange rate as at the time of the transactions and the difference in payment of FTT is recovered and paid to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF).