The House of Representatives have summoned both the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwuinmi Adeshina and others over alleged N21 billion rice importation tax evasion scam.
Vanguard reports that 25 rice importers are to appear alongside Okonjo-iweala and Adeshina so as to ascertain how over a huge sum of N21 billion tax was evaded despite the provisions of subsidy by the Federal Government to the importers.
A reliable source privy to this development, who spoke to Vanguard in confidence stated “the whole exercise was grossly abused by the importers and laced with fraud”.
“we’ll unravel those government officials who aided these economic saboteurs and ensure that all the tax they cornered is returned to government coffers” the source said.
“The adhoc committee set up by the House will also ensure that they are speedily prosecuted”
Asked whether the Nigeria Customs Service, was also summoned, the source said “yes they are the people that will as a matter of law make available all the necessary statistics at the hearing on tomorrow (Monday, May 4, 2015) “.
The source further said ” We’ve also discovered that those who got subsidy were the ones that even evaded tax more than those that did not get a dime from government”
The source also confirmed that they had arrived at the N21bn from all the import duty transactions carried out by the importers.
