The dailies and interwebs have been buzzing with the news on the Kenya Revenue Authority arrests. If you know nothing about it, then you’ve probably seen the jokes circulating Social Media about how suspects showed up in court wearing dark glasses and hoodies with an aim of concealing their identity.. Well, that was followed by an order from the Chief Justice advising court officials that though the right to privacy must be respected at all times, due process of the administration of justice may be hampered if suspects in criminal matters are not easily identifiable. Anyway, back to how this will affect you, if it isn’t already.
The Director of Criminal Investigations took a very bold step by raiding KRA to arrest employees who are suspected to be aiding in tax evasion. It’s about time right? More than 80 have so far been arrested from the Domestic Taxes department, Border Control department and the Data Processing Unit. But here’s the thing, this raid has caused a slow down on customs clearance as the three units are very critical to the process. Ordinarily it takes 2 to 3 days for a customs entry to pass at the airport. For the last 10 days very few entries have been passing and there hasn’t been any official communication from KRA.
We look forward to the clean KRA but we expect a good while of things being slow at the agency for some time. Why? Because the officers under arrest are obviously not working and other employees are said to be in hiding for fear of arrest. This has created a slow down due to shortage of manpower. The clearance of personal effects is also affected. Even though they are allowed into the country duty free, they still have to undergo the entire customs process before they are released.
The Kenya Ports Authority gives 4 free days to clear your consignment, after which storage charges start applying. Shipping lines on the other hand give between 7 and 9 days before demurrage charges begin counting. The Kenya Airports Authority gives only 2 days storage free. So expect to dig deeper into your pocket to cater for demurrages and storage penalties, until the current situation normalizes.
So just in case you skipped to the end of this blog; long story short; expect customs entries especially on imports to take longer than usual because the DCI is busy working to clean up suspected corruption at the Kenya Revenue Authority. While we honestly wish him all the best we hope the situation will normalize sooner than later to ease the pain of importers.
