A questionable web of shell companies and tax-evasion schemes have cost West African countries millions of dollars in revenue, a new investigation shows.
West Africa Leaks, an investigative project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in collaboration with West African journalists, has uncovered how these practices take money out the region. ICIJ says its findings were drawn from a pool of 30 million documents, including leaked financial records.
In one example, SNC-Lavalin, a Canadian engineering firm, exploited a “lopsided” treaty between Senegal and Mauritius after winning a $50-million deal to build a processing plant for Senegal's Grande Cote mineral sands mine. In the hope of becoming more attractive to investors, the 2004 treaty was primarily set up to avoid taxing multinationals twice in each country. But with Mauritius' notoriety as a tax haven, SNC-Lavalin managed to avoid $8.9 million in taxes altogether. It set up a shell company in Mauritius “for the specific purpose of helping the engineering giant avoid tax payments,” ICIJ reports.
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