{Three men including two Indians and a Rwandan accountant have been arrested over alleged forgery of Electronic Billing Machine (EBM) invoice sales worth over Rwf 140 million.
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The trio, Rajendra, the director of Sabura, Jignesh of Sai Service and Kalisa Abdallah working as an accountant in Bbaale George’s hardware shop, were arrested by the Rwanda Revenue Protection Department.
Baale George reported that his accountant, Kalisa Abdallah, is responsible for the forgeries which he realized at the time of filing in his tax returns.
He says that on 1st December 2015 he realized three released invoices not recorded in the system nor were the sales made, for which Kalisa declined responsibility and instead referred him to consult with Rwanda Revenue Authority.
“I phoned him the following day but he didn’t answer my call. I immediately took the decision of heading for RRA alone. Getting there I received explanations on the case. They showed me that the released invoices have a value of Rwf 140 million. I kept calling Kalisa without response until he sent a short message at dawn informing that he is no longer able to work with me. ”he said.
The said invoices were released to ‘Fer à Béton’ with a description of having sold to them steel products which they do not have in store.
The Indians have admitted to having committed the crime, saying Kalisa convinced them into providing tax invoices to raise their input tax so they could declare less output tax thus evade the payable. “He told us that he has a trading company and can facilitate us to pay little taxes. We accepted his seduction.”
Kalisa has however denied the allegations.
“I have never taken Bbaale’s EBM. I was only a temporally worker. He only gives me books of accounts and financial statements which I use in preparing his tax returns,” he pleaded.
Kalisa claims there are some disagreements between him and Bbaale which he will reveal before the courts of law.
Robert Mugabe, the deputy commissioner investigations and enforcement at RRA has revealed that forgery with the intention of defrauding and evading taxes is against the law. If found guilty, the culprits get a six to five year sentence.
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