US Gov’t charged Cameroonian banks to declare account balances

A US government agency responsible for tax collection and tax law, American Internal Revenue Service (IRS), has taken up an initiative aiming to fight tax evasion, scheduled to take effect on July, 2014, requiring that foreign banks “declare the balances of all accounts held by American citizens containing sums greater than 50,000USD some circa FCFA 25 Million by December 31, 2014.”

This information was revealed by Citi Bank in Cameroon recently to representatives of other banks at a meeting held in Douala with respects to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

According to this release, from July 1, 2014, banks in Cameroon that fail to abide to this could see about 30 per cent of some payments withheld.

In order to explain the FATCA to other banks during the meeting, Citi Bank’s Director of Legal Affairs for Northern Europe, Pierre Fiset called on Cameroonian banks to cooperate fully by signing the Foreign Financial Institution (FFI) Agreement which mandates that Cameroonian institutions provide required information to the American tax authorities.

On his part, Désiré Geoffrey Mbock, Permanent Secretary of the Task Force against Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC), and the National Financial Investigation Agency (ANIF), said Cameroon’s anti-money laundering body, received 250 reports in 2013.

This report which is in accordance with the fight against ill gotten money from a variety of means motivated the ideology by (IRS).

Financial crimes by Cameroonians in the US, like cyber crime was one of the factors that prompted the IRS to make this decision calling on banks to declare bank balances.

It should be noted that, in 2013, more than 20 people, majority of them immigrants of Cameroonian origin, were nabbed following investigations into fraudulent billing practices in the US home healthcare industry, Medicaid.

Florence Bikundi, 51, a Cameroonian was arrested charged in a federal indictment with healthcare fraud, medical fraud and other charges in the scheme worth more than circa FCFA 35.8 billion.

Also is the case of Etchi-Banyi, 30, of College Park, Maryland who owns Ultimate Goal Home Care Agency Inc., a nurse staffing agency based in Maryland, was accused conspiring with four named defendants to get Medicaid payments for personal care services that were never provided.

Although Cameroon do not have any treaty signed with the USA in respect to tax evasion, they are however a signatory to the FATCA and are as such to declare bank balances so as to fight ills like money laundering, scamming, sales of drugs, sales of girls for sex and more.