The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday continued its questioning of the immediate past Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Babatunde Fowler.
Newsonspot.com.ng reports that Fowler who was on Monday quizzed by the EFCC in Lagos for over seven hours and was allowed to go home late at night returned to the commission on Tuesday as part of his bail condition.
Confirming the fresh questioning, the spokesman for the EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, said Fowler still had questions to answer hence his return to the commission.
Uwujaren said, “He was allowed to go home last night and he has returned this morning.”
Fowler is being interrogated by the commission over a revenue shortfall at the FIRS as well as a N100 billion tax evasion allegations levelled against a tax firm, Alpha Beta Consulting, Newsonspot.com.ng gathered.
Fowler is a former Chief Executive Officer, Lagos State Internal Revenue Service.
Recall that the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Alpha Beta Consulting, Dapo Apara, accused the firm of tax fraud to the tune of N100bn.
In a petition to the EFCC in 2018, Apara stated that Alpha Beta, the firm given exclusive rights to monitor and collect Internally Generated Revenue on behalf of the Lagos Government, “has become an avenue for official corruption of government officials, a conduit pipe for massive money-laundering scheme, tax evasion, among other vices.”
In the petition which was written by his lawyer, Adetunji Shoyoye and Associates, the ex-CEO claimed that the fraud had been covered by powerful politicians in the state.
President Muhammadu Buhari had replaced Fowler as FIRS chairman in December 2019 at the end of his first term in office.
