The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has announced plans to build a state-of-the-art digital forensic lab as part of its efforts to nab tax cheats.
The report states that the lab is expected to help the tax authority to recover all deleted files as well as mine hidden data, including hidden accounts from taxpayers’ computers and mobile phones to uncover tax and financial frauds.
“The proposed Digital Forensic lab will be set up to perform the activities of forensic Acquisition, Extraction, and e-discovery of evidential materials,” KRA said.
The move comes at a time when many individuals and businesses are switching to online transactions and electronic record-keeping, making it difficult for KRA officials to identify tax defaulters and frauds.
“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 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,” KRA said in a disclosure on the new laboratory.
KRA announced a pre-bidding virtual conference slated for May 12th for bidders interested in applying for a three-year tender geared towards setting up the forensic lab. The agency says it is searching for a consultant to supply, deliver, implement and commission a digital forensics lab.
KRA is also seeking to procure special software to access data from Macintosh computers, iPhones, iPads, and other smartphones.
“The tool should also be compatible and have the ability to extract, and analyze data from all types of phones and tablets, should include a 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, the camera of capturing images of the data or screenshots directly from the device…” it disclosed in a tender call for supplies to the forensic lab.
