KRA Lab To Spy On Your WhatsApp, Files

Written By Mary Mumbua 📝

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is establishing a sophisticated forensic laboratory that will allow it to mine data from taxpayers’ computers and mobile phones to discover tax and financial wrongdoing, including secret accounts and records.

The initiative by the IRS’s newly formed intelligence management division comes at a time when businesses are increasingly turning to internet transactions and electronic record-keeping over traditional paper-based accounting systems.

The digital lab, according to KRA, would focus on electronic evidence forensic acquisition, extraction, and discovery.

“A lot of evidence gathered during the course of investigations is digital in nature such as e-mails, texts, video, audio, image files, and other transactional data on hard disks and other storage media,” the agency said in a disclosure on the new laboratory.

“The investigations of such crimes require sophisticated data acquisition, mining, analytics, and storage tools in addition to technical expertise to reconstruct the transactions and provide insights into complex crimes,” it added.

Many significant firms, including some multinationals and mobile phone operators, now give KRA teams soft copy records of their transactions.

However, the change to internet transactions has posed a challenge for tax audit and investigation teams, as some businesses have begun to conceal their true financial activities and accounts.

Furthermore, tax investigators and auditors have found it difficult to gain complete access to all data from computers or phones seized during investigations into suspected fraud or tax evasion due to a password security option in digital records.

KRA has revealed that it will use specialized software to gain access to data on Macintosh computers, iPhones, iPads, and other smartphones.

“The tool should also be compatible and have ability to extract, analyse data from all types of phones and tablets, should include full range of peripherals and accessories needed for mobile forensic investigations, including connectors … faraday bags, memory card readers, SIM and micro-SIM ID Cloning cards, camera of capturing images of the data or screenshots directly from the device…” the taxman disclosed in a tender call for supplies to the forensic lab.

In its budget for the financial year ended June 30, 2021, KRA set aside Sh31.19 million to acquire an intelligence gathering system as it steps up its war on tax evasion.

KRA has imposed strict constraints on businesses as part of its digital intelligence gathering, mandating them to purchase internet-based electronic tax registers (ETRs) and connect them to its networks for real-time monitoring of their daily sales.

The two technologies will provide KRA with a view of items as they leave the factory through the point of exchange between merchants and consumers, allowing them to collect what is owed at each stage of the supply chain.

The taxman will be able to trace what the businesses produce thanks to CCTV cameras.

Failure to comply with the requirements might result in a fine of up to Sh1 million, a three-year prison sentence, or both.