The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has organised a two-day training on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Progressive Taxation for about 20 journalists in the Ashanti Region.

The training, with financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Denmark, is part of a strategic partnership initiative for Ghana and West Africa Project.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECO) defines IFFs as the illegal movement of money from one country to the other, mostly through corruption, tax evasion and money laundering.

Mr. Edward Cudjoe, the Ashanti Regional Director of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), highlighted how IFFs crippled the socio-economic development of a country, causing an increase in poverty, stunt economic growth and underfunded public services.

He mentioned the key drivers of IFFs as corruption in the public service, tax evasion and trade mispricing, environmental crime such as galamsey, money laundering and use of shell companies.

Although there are legal and institutional frameworks that regulate some economic and crime related activities, Mr Cudjoe said there were gaps in them which needed to be amended.

He noted that there were other activities which had no regulatory body such as Artisanal Mining and Virtual Assets Service Providers – allowing people to take advantage to engage in IFFs.

“The mining sector, particularly the artisanal and small-scale mining, is largely unsupervised and attractive to criminals. It contributes 31 per cent of total gold production and attracts 60 per cent of the country’s mining labour force,” he explained.

Mr. Cudjoe noted that to fight IFFs, countries must understand that people who engage in the illegal activity adopt a range of strategies, some of which are complex to bypass regulatory and legal frameworks of governments.

It is against this background that the European Union and Germany donated €70 million to the African Union as support to strengthen its capability to fight against IFFs at the international level.

Mr. Cudjoe, therefore, encouraged journalists to support the fight against IFFs by investigating and writing fact-checked stories to unearth the hidden truths about IFFs in Ghana and beyond.

Mr. Benaiah Addo, the Executive Director of the Green Tax Youth Africa, Accra, said taxation was a means to gather revenue for the development of a country.

However, when the structures are weak with no proper equipment to foster the collection and proper record keeping, people devise various means of evading tax or paying less.

Mr. Addo said every government must invest in the process of taxation to harness enough revenue and seal most if not all gaps in the tax system for the good of the country.