Probes and legal proceedings against individuals possessing “suspicious” wealth or “dirty” money

The General Manager of the National Tax Department has stated that the taxation of wealth and most of the new taxes included in the Finance Bill 2018 do not affect the majority of citizens, but are rather meant for wealthy people in particular, with the aim of achieving equity and equality between ordinary and rich citizens in front of tax collection.

Mr Mustapha Zikara said during a meeting with the Finance and Budget Committee of the National People’s Assembly devoted to discussing tax provisions included in the Finance Bill 2018 that the national tax services’ strategy is “to expose those people who have external signs of wealth but are unknown at the level of the tax services as well as those who wholly or partly evade paying their due taxes”.
Mr Zikara told the MPs that the tax authorities will organize to this effect regular field visits based on relevant data provided by various sources.
Owners of villas, luxury apartments, luxury cars, big businesses and pleasure yachts, will be affected by these stringent tax-related regulations, he underscored.
The sources of the latter’s property will be brought, he said, before the relevant fact-finding committees, which will take into account all the documents submitted by them and then examine the extent to which their revenues are subject to the laws in force both in terms of taxation or illegal sources of wealth.
With regard to those wealthy people who got money from illegal sources, Mr. Zikara stressed that his services will not only initiate strict tax control procedures, but will also inform the judiciary in order to carry out the proper in-depth investigations in this context.
According to him, all new tax measures, whether related to wealth, corporate profits or gross income, are meant to enshrine fairness and equality among all citizens, and to show that “not only ordinary citizens pay their taxes, but even the wealthy”, as he put it.