Kenya Revenue Authority spies identify rich US$24bn tax evaders
ZURICH - What started as an embarrassing tabloid scandal at Credit Suisse Group AG has suddenly emerged as a very real threat to the bank’s top executives, including Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam.
Outside investigators are reporting directly to Chairperson Urs Rohner, who will move swiftly to take punitive action against the institution’s senior officials if they’re found to be responsible, a person familiar with the situation said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The drama stems from a public confrontation last week in Zurich between Iqbal Khan, an ex-top Credit Suisse banker who had been feuding with Thiam, and detectives hired by the lender to shadow him.
The operation was ordered to prevent Khan from poaching private bankers to take to his new employer, crosstown rival UBS Group AG, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among the key questions is who authorised the hiring of the private investigators to follow Khan and who subsequently knew about it.
The scandal risks shattering a period of relative calm for Credit Suisse - and Thiam - after the bank recently completed a three-year restructuring.
The lender had enjoyed better results at the volatile global markets business and seen revenue from securities trading rise recently even as peers posted declines, giving a boost to Thiam.
But that’s history now that the rift between Thiam and Khan, which had been an open secret for months in the corridors of Credit Suisse’s imposing Zurich headquarters, has become the talk of the town.
Tensions between the men had already hit a low point in January during a party at Thiam’s house in the upscale neighbourhood of Herrliberg outside Zurich when the two men had an argument, people familiar with the situation said.
As with so much in the saga, the two sides give a different version of events. The Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger, citing unidentified people close to Thiam, said the argument had been “a personal thing”; people close to Khan, who ran the key international wealth-management unit, were quoted as saying that the CEO had grown increasingly exasperated with the younger executive’s success and the fact that he had taken on the role of “crown prince” in a possible CEO succession. Relationship has soured What’s not in dispute is the relationship between Khan and Thiam had soured in the months before his exit in July. When a corporate reorganisation came in February, Khan’s responsibilities stayed the same, even as two colleagues were elevated to the executive committee. NAIROBI - Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) detectives have identified wealthy individuals and companies that owe it an estimated Sh250 billion in what promises to be the biggest crackdown on high net-worth persons.
The taxman’s intelligence and strategic operations, which has a team of about 100 investigators, has in recent months been investigating rich people’s sources of income and their expenditure against their tax remittances.
It has also been analysing companies’ financial dealings, especially firms doing business with the government and counties, to unearth tax cheats through matching their payments and income declared to KRA.
Githii Mburu, the KRA Commissioner-General, told Parliament last week that the surveillance of the rich and companies has revealed the potential to collect Sh250 billion that remains unremitted to the taxman.
"We already have established and it is in our record (the Sh250 billion). Whenever we profile a company or an individual taxpayer, we look at what they are earning, their sources of income and everything else vis-a-vis what they have declared," Mr Mburu told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). -