The Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, has appointed some commercial banks as agents to recover the sum of N1.8 trillion from accounts of MultiChoice Nigeria Limited and MultiChoice Africa.
News of this was contained in a statement signed by the Executive Chairman, Muhammad Nami.
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Nami confirmed that the decision to appoint the banks as agents to freeze the accounts as a result of the group’s constant refusal to grant FIRS access to its servers for audit.
The statement says it was discovered that the companies persistently breached all agreements and undertakings with the Service, refused to promptly respond to correspondence, lacked data integrity, and displayed a lack of transparency as they continued to deny FIRS access to their records.
Multi Choice Nigeria is also accused of failing to give accurate information to the FIRS on the number of its subscribers and income.
Nami added that the group’s performance does not reflect in its tax obligations and compliance level in Nigeria. describing the level of non-compliance by Multi Choice Africa (MCA), the parent company of Multi-Choice Nigeria (MCN) as very alarming.
The parent company, which provides services to MCN has never paid Value Added Tax (VAT) since its inception.
Nami further added that Nigeria contributes 34% of total revenue for the Multi Choice group. The next to Nigeria from intelligence gathering is Kenya with 11%, and Zambia is the third highest with 10%. The rest of Africa where they have presence accounts for 45% of the group’s total revenue.
Editor: Oloyede Oworu
