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Two Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) customs officials have been grilled by the anti-graft detectives over their role in an attempted tax evasion plan involving gold from DRC at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.

The two, names withheld, were arrested on Monday night with reports indicating the deal involved Empress Bullion Gold trading company and a number of foreign nationals from Dubai, UK and DRC.

The officials have been accused of colluding with clearing and forwarding agents and are suspected to have received thousands of dollars to process shipping documents without any money going to State.

The arrest comes just a month after a confidential report revealed that the theft of gold which is in transit through JKIA is always facilitated by rogue and corrupt State agencies officials.  The ongoing investigations further seek to unravel identities of all the people involved in the scandal. Further reports by the investigative agencies show that there has been a surge in tax evasion cases across the country.

KRA had in March announced it was likely to miss its target for the year ending June 30. Late last year, President William Ruto challenged KRA to collect Sh4 trillion and threatened to send top management packing if they failed to seal leaks in collection. This has seen very tightened controls by the tax masters and it’s expected that with more than 1 million persons added this year to the taxpayers register the figures on taxes should drastically change. A number of government officials have also been singled out in gold scam that has reached unprecedented levels in the last few years. In a confidential report last month, the DCI also revealed that the gold scammers were colluding with rogue Immigration Department officials to intimidate foreign businessmen and their witnesses after defrauding them.

A number of Immigration officers already identified were even placing red alerts of deporting the foreigners who have been defrauded without compelling reasons.

The Immigration officials involved in these scams are said to receive 10 per cent of the proceeds, a report states.

In one of the cases, an official was found to have endorsed passport of a Liberian gold fraudster with a fake E-visa at JKIA to enable him enter the country illegally.

DCI warned that the scamming in the country had reached unprecedented proportions.