‘Business was bad… didn’t earn for two years’ – Monalisa Chinda speaks on tax evasion

Monalisa Chinda, Nollywood actress and film producer, says she got indicted for tax evasion because “business was really bad”.

In April, the Lagos state high court in Igbosere had renewed a bench warrant for the arrest of the film star on allegations of tax evasion and, yet, she failed to appear in court for trial on the due date as earlier summoned.

In a recent interview, the 44-year-old TV personality said she had only failed to pay taxes for two non-consecutive years and that a letter sent to remind her arrived late.

“It’s just about a letter that was written to me some years back that I was evading my taxes but I didn’t see it on time. I know I pay my tax but I just didn’t do so for 2017 and 2019. Plus then, business was really bad,” said the mother of one.

“I didn’t earn anything for those two years. Perhaps the mistake I made back then was not going to their office and talking to them and all that. But the letter, like I said, came late. The next thing I saw was my face all over the media brandished ‘evasion of tax’.

“That really disturbed me such that I had to quickly go look for the authorities and those who have been assigned to collect taxes. In the process of doing that, another one came again. I was like ‘Who’s behind this?’ Everybody in Port Harcourt got worried.

“All the stakeholders, politicians and my people were just calling me. I had over a thousand calls. ‘Lisa, what’s going on? Who did you offend? Are you the only one? Bla Bla Bla! My husband was just having a field day laughing. I told them not to worry and that it would be sorted out.”

As of the time of the warrant’s renewal, Chinda’s case had been adjourned till June 5 while her trial had thereafter been fixed for October 10, 2019.

Monalisa Code Productions, the actress’ brand, runs its operations in Lagos and is acclaimed to have produced some of the top-notch movies that Nollywood can boast of.