Tackling Africa’s Illicit Financial Flows
- Abuja Centre for Democracy and Development 2014
- 3p
The report presents the outcome of the IFF conference hosted by Trust Africa.Presentations from various panellists with different areas of focus and inclinations formed the basis of this report. Until recently, there had been no debate about illicit financial flows, the problem was not only massive and illegal, but also deterred economic growth and development. IFFs were orchestrated at the apex of government; hence the need for new and creative ways of arresting the tide. The conference called for a new approach predicated upon popular mobilization for revolutionary actions against all forms of IFFs. The question whether Africa was really rising as often claimed in official circles was posed, noting that such statistics do not reflect the true condition of the people who encounter diverse forms of deprivations on daily basis, including excruciating poverty, rising unemployment and systemic corruption. The drivers of IFFs were identiied to include global economic policy regimes and weak regulatory capacity of African state, therefore, called for coherent steps to fight IFF and a spirit of pan-Africanism.Emphasis was placed on the dynamics of the global system of capital formation and utilization that is heavily tilted against Africa. The conference also stressed the need to understand the contradictions of international aid flows, identifying the form and character of debt servicing as a form of IFFs from Africa. Notable explanations for this, according to the panelists, included the lack of mining policies in the region, the dominance of concessional contracts instead of full production contracts, institutional and capacity gaps in the formulation and execution of contracts, poor regulatory and control systems, stagnant position of Africa in the value-chain of mineral extraction the primacy of economic development at the expense of the cultural and social foundations of development. The panel called for collective regional framework of response and the development of a multistakeholder platform for managing natural resources. The conference also engaged specific issues in IFFs, including international fiscal regime and double taxation, transfer mispricing and tax havens, national tax regimes and abuses of tax incentives and the role of private sector in domestic resource mobilization
AID CAPITAL FLIGHT CORRUPTION GOOD GOVERNANCE ILLICIT WEALTH MONEY LAUNDERING KICKBACKS SMUGGLING TAX HAVENS TAX EVASION TRANSPARENCY
