Burkina Faso’s finance minister under investigation over tax evasion

OUAGADOUGOU, July 29 (Xinhua) — Burkina Faso’s Transition Parliament has questioned the country’s economy and finance minister as it opened an inquiry into tax evasion, a parliamentary source told Xinhua on Tuesday.

Official sources revealed that the government had in the last five years lost approximately 40 million U.S. dollars after the treasury received bouncing cheques.

The objective of the parliamentary commission of inquiry is to track down defaulters and force them to pay their debts to the national treasury.

While being questioned, Economy and Finance Minister Gustave Sanon said “the government had taken appropriate action to recover the funds.”

On June 30, 2015, Burkinabe’s parliament passed a resolution for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry that would investigate tax evasion and the issue of bouncing cheques to the public treasury between 2012 to 2014.

Burkina Faso has been going through a transition period since the fall of Blaise Compaore’s regime through a popular uprising in October last year.

“If we get documents justifying that some officials in the former regime did not pay their taxes, we shall expose them and recover the funds,” the commission’s president Robert Kontogm said.