This also happens in Kenya: the national head of the Tax Office, the Kenya Revenue Autjority, was arrested last Monday together with his wife for tax evasion.
Joseph Chege Gikonyo is accused by the Anti-Corruption Ethics Commission (EACC) of stealing about 38 million shillings from the Inland Revenue through a specially created family company.
These are only the proven bank deposits made by the company with the money from the evasion but investigators continue to investigate the provenance of a further 597 million (a disproportionate amount of EUR 5 million) which were invested in real estate and land in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kilifi. For these operations, the couple has been under pressure since 2016 and on Monday, with the approval of the Attorney General of Kenya, the EACC found a clear indictment to begin the trial against them. The two appeared yesterday before the Capital Court, the court of Milimani and will have to answer for at least ten years of managing funds stolen from the coffers of the State, scamming the very institution of which Gikonyo was the head.
In fact, the EACC insists that the KRA boss has used his position as manager to evade taxes more easily and for the past two years has filed a lawsuit to get him and his wife to return their alleged illicit wealth to the state.
Gikonyo also has shareholdings in the Equity Bank, the telecommunications company Safaricom and the KenGen electricity company.