Stakeholders and policy actors drawn from government, Civil Society Organisations, Labour, researchers and academia and other relevant players, will gather in Nairobi, Kenya to deliberate on the topical issue of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) from Africa and proff er solutions on how to curtail the trend that is ripping off Africa of billions of dollars on yearly bases.
Th e report of African Union (AU) High Level Panel on IFFs chaired by former South African President, Th abo Mbeki, in 2015 has since established that up to $60 billion is lost every year, leaving Africa illicitly.
Th e Pan African Conference (PAC) on Illicit Financial Flows, being organised by the Tax Justice Network of Africa (TJNA) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA), will focus on the emerging attempts to “recast and reshape the IFFs narrative and methodology and what this would signify for the struggle against IFFs from Africa and more broadly for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
” To underscore the importance of the event, the conference is being organised in partnership with the Independent Commission For the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), the Tax Justice Network (TJN), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ).
Th e Nairobi conference, which is the fi fth edition of the annual conference seeks to provide a forum for policy actors from Africa and across the globe to articulate positions and propose solutions towards curbing IFFs from Africa.
Th e conference will also provides opportunity to take stock of the success made so far and challenges facing African governments in their eff orts to honour their commitments to stem IFFs through the implementation of the High Level Panel recommendations.
A key outcome from the fi fth PAC will be a Declaration by TJNA and its partners reaffi rming their fi ght for tax justice and a call to implement the recommendations of the AU High-Level Panel on IFFs from Africa.
Stakeholders have frowned at eff orts to confi ne the defi nition IFFs to criminal and outright illegal activities such as money laundering, corruption and theft of state assets, while excluding the issue of corporate tax avoidance.
According to ICRICT, if such eff orts succeed, they would seriously undermine the progress achieved so far, particularly in Africa, which has continue to play a leadership role in the eff orts to curtail IFFs.
It stated that corporate tax avoidance represents a substantial portion of IFFs and as harmful to development as thee other types of IFFs.
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Removing corporate tax avoidance from consideration, the commission said, would remove much of the focus on the commercial component of IFFs which according to the High Level Panel report, accounts for up to 60% of IFFs from Africa.
