South Africa’s Mbeki Warns, Illicit Financial Flows Are Draining the Continent’s Economy

FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

South Africa’s Mbeki Warns, Illicit Financial Flows Are Draining the Continent’s Economy

Oct. 4, 2018 (EIRNS)—Addressing the African Union high-level panel on illicit financial flows (IFF) inter-ministerial meeting at Abuja, former South African President Thabo Mbeki said that losses due to these flows have increased from $50 billion annually in 2015 to over $80 billion today.

The Chairman of the Nigerian Federal Inland Revenue Service Tunde Fowler, who spoke at Abuja on the efforts by his agency to tackle the problem, said at least 40% of the total IFF in Africa comes from Nigeria. Fowler identified three sectors of the economy with the highest prevalence of IFF in Nigeria, namely multinational corporations, oil and gas, and banking and financial services. He said that IFF were not only monies that were repatriated abroad, but also when companies and individuals fail to pay taxes to the government, reported Premium Times news agency.

In addition, Fowler said that IFF also occur when some multinational companies and individuals repatriate funds from one country and keep them in another African country without transferring them abroad.

Franklin Roosevelt associate and Treasury official Harry Dexter White’s original design for the Inter-American Bank, intended as the predecessor of Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system, would have made the recipient country of IFFs and flight capital responsible for tracking them, and for returning them on demand to the government of the country of origin.