The work of the official official departments in Jordan continues with serious reviews of the files of tax evasion, money laundering and anti-corruption, between a tax raid of tax evading companies and institutions, and the arrest of persons accused of corruption cases.
The serious business of these institutions is accompanied by security raid campaigns for companies in the private sector working in the field of contracting, and others belonging to businessmen and influential people, to investigate cases of tax evasion and money laundering in the millions of dinars.
The most recent decisions of those institutions were the provisional seizure of movable and immovable property and property belonging to a former minister of works and major contracting companies, on the pretext of tax evasion and change orders in tenders and government projects.
In the area of anti-corruption, the Prosecutor General of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission arrested two people on the background of two corruption cases, one of them with a crime of fraud of 5 million dinars (7 million dollars) in one of the companies, and the other with the crime of cheating in the contracting works in the Salt Ring Road project, according to an official source .
Tax evasion in Jordan, according to official sources, is about 1.2 billion dinars (1.7 billion dollars).
In terms of numbers, an official source at the Presidency of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission told Al-Jazeera Net that the number of files before the commission reached 232 files during the past year, while the authority referred to the judiciary 277 files during the year 2019 from the cases it already had.
With regard to the current year, the number of files pending before the Prosecutors of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission since the beginning of the current year 2020 amounts to 276 files, of which 87 were referred to the judiciary.
According to the same source, the coming days will witness the announcement of a number of cases that include major financial excesses, stressing that the investigation teams of the commission continued its work during the curfew during the Corona pandemic and completed many cases.
Raid campaigns
For his part, Finance Minister Mohamed Al-Asas denied linking government measures to combat tax evasion with the repercussions of the Corona epidemic and declining revenues, stressing in statements to a press conference held a few days ago that the government had adopted a high-level program to reduce tax evasion.
Analysts believe that the campaign coincided with a sharp decline in local public revenues amounted to 550 million dinars (775 million dollars) during the first third of this year, and the weak contributions from the private sector to "Himat Watan" fund to support national efforts in the face of the Corona pandemic, which accelerated them .
Al-Asas added that the government has undertaken extensive operations to combat tax evasion through training and transfer of experiences over the past months, stressing that tax evasion treats money-laundering treatment, and that the legal criminalization of evasion is large, in order to manipulate financial accounts.
The minister pointed out that the tax raids on some sites are the last option after extensive investigations.
Economic analyst Khaled Al-Zubaidi believes that the first priority with combating tax evasion is combating corruption and plundering of public funds, as the system of binding in official tenders, and changing orders in projects that exceed their original value of the project constitute serious crimes.
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Zubaidi stressed the need for the governmental campaign against tax evaders and perpetrators of financial and administrative corruption to continue without interruption, and to include all corrupt people without discrimination or selectivity.
Distribution of charges
And social media witnessed a case of spreading accusations of corruption and theft of public money, prompting former Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Nsour to issue a statement on "raiding his house and preventing him from traveling against the background of suspicions of corruption."
Al-Nisour said in his publication, “Fugitive trumpets were launched these days, including us with their familiar, repetitive and reprehensible coverage. This coverage received a response from some local electronic flies, and their latest allegations were travel bans, home searches, and seizures of what we have.”
And the Eagles continued, "I and others who served in the most difficult, dangerous, toughest and longest conditions are accustomed to this and more, and we have been coloring it for many years. We do not give them any attention, and we do not give them any attention."
Activist Ahmed Hassan Al-Zoubi wrote on Facebook, saying, "We bless the efforts of provisional seizure and the fight against recent tax evasion, and we demand that this extend to the three billion smuggled into safe havens - the IMF loans - and reveal the names of those involved."