Rwanda National Police

Police is holding three people, who include two Indian businessmen for allegedly evading taxes amounting to Rwf70 million through manipulating Electronic Billing Machine (EBM) invoices.

According to officials from Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA), the suspects were apprehended by the police following a tip off by a businessman whose EBM was illegally used in some dubious operations by his accountant, who is also among those arrested.

“The accountant, Abudallah Kalisa, approached two Indian businessmen and sold them invoices of items that were not sold; the two men bought the invoices to register a higher input VAT so that they could declare less output VAT,” said , Robert Mugabe, the RRA Deputy Commissioner for Revenue Investigations and Enforcement Department.

This means that the suspects would pay less tax but would be refunded a certain portion of VAT, as a norm, by RRA.

Mugabe added that RRA was notified about the scam by Sulaiman Baale, the owner of the EBM who had discovered that Kalisa had taken his machine and printed four receipts of iron bars.

“We advise business people to always take note of their sells, avoid getting themselves involved in such malpractices and always use tax advisors,” said Mugabe.

In an interview with Baale, he said that, Kalisa showed up at his shop as usual on December 1 at around 5pm, and asked to give him the EBM.

“I gave him the machine but my wife was suspicious; minutes later, Kalisa called me and told me it was too late to declare so I told him to bring back the machine. I immediately verified the sells data control and discovered that there were four receipts of iron bars that were printed; I deal in furniture I don’t deal in iron bars so I decided to take the case to police and RRA for investigations,” said Baale.

The two Indian businessmen; Rajenda of Saburu Trading Company and Jignesh of SAI services confessed to have committed the offense.

 “We regret our actions and we are willing to pay all the fines; this is the first time we are committing an offense and  we can only tell business people out there that you cannot walk away with any form of malpractice in Rwanda,” said Rajendra.

Police spokesperson, CSP Celestin Twahirwa warned against such malpractices noting that “Rwanda National Police is there to protect the revenues, policies and laws, and going against them cannot be tolerated.”

Article 369 of the Penal Code states that a taxpayer guilty of tax evasion shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of between three to six months and a fine equal to the evaded tax.

If the taxpayer is found guilty of deliberate tax evasion, such as false deliberate accounting entries, forgery and falsification of records or any other act punishable by law, he/she shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of six months to two years and a fine equal to the evaded tax