By Alex Akao
The last may not have been heard of the ongoing battle by the
Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to recover over N23 billion rice duty
allegedly evaded by five giant rice-importing companies, as the famous
Intercontinental Hotels Lagos might be shut down this week over the
raging issue.
The hotel, which Daily Sun learnt may be shut down, is owned by one of the alleged duty invasion companies, Milan Group, which the NCS claimed had refused to pay its duty on excess rice imports beyond its earlier approved quota.
The decision to shut down the popular hospitality business was made
known yesterday morning by the image-maker of the NCS, Deputy
Controller, Wale Adeniyi, while speaking in a Ships and Ports radio
programme in Lagos.
According to the spokesperson of the Customs Service, the new twist to the alleged debt recovery move was informed by the failure of the management of Milan Group to pay up the rice subsidy after exceeding its rice quota for 2014.
He justified the planned closure of the hotel by the fact that the Milan Group is housed in the same premises as Intercontinental Hotel and shares the same ownership.
He said, “we are not unmindful that they have guests in the hotel. We are making representations to them to ensure that either they pay Customs duty or they evacuate their guests before we come to seal the hotel premises because it is the hotel premises that houses the Milan Group.
“We have given them options; to make do either their payment or we have no choice but to stop them from operating. We do not want to create unnecessary scenes so we are going to be civil in our approach to the Intercontinental issue.
He said the planned operation was in line with government directives that the premises of all defaulting importers should be sealed off.
He said, “this is not a threat. We have been given a directive to seal the business premises of all defaulting importers. It is a directive we are going to carry out.
We’ll give them one or two days notice to get their guests and their customers informed so that we don’t end up embarrassing anybody.”
According to Adeniyi, some of the companies have falsely claimed that the quotas given to them were to be carried over to 2015.
Debunking such insinuations, he said, “the documents conveying the quotas were explicit.”
“The quotas were meant to bridge a supply gap of 1.3 metric tonnes
was estimated to be what Nigeria needed to bridge the supply gap in 2014
and that it should be imported in a concessionary way. It was stated
that any of the companies that exceeded the quota will have to pay what
others who didn’t get concessions would pay, and that is 70 per cent
duty,” he stated.
“So they imported 750,000 metric tonnes in excess. So, when told to go and pay, they are now saying it is retroactive. It is carried over. We don’t have any document telling us that the waiver is carried over.”
