By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s revenue service said on Thursday it had instructed banks to freeze the accounts of media entertainment firm MultiChoice Africa and its Nigerian subsidiary for breaching agreements and denying access to their records for auditing.

The firms are part of South Africa-based MultiChoice Group, which provides television and other entertainment services across Africa.

The banks would have to recover 1.8 trillion naira ($4.4 billion) in outstanding tax obligations from MultiChoice Africa and MultiChoice Nigeria, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said in a statement.

“It was discovered that the companies persistently breached all agreements and undertakings with the Service, they would not promptly respond to correspondences, they lacked data integrity and are not transparent as they continually deny FIRS access to their records,” FIRS said.

MultiChoice Group in South Africa said it would issue a statement soon. A representative of its Nigerian subsidiary could not immediately be reached by phone for comment.

FIRS said the Nigerian subsidiary contributed the biggest share of revenue to the Multichoice group.

($1 = 411.0000 naira)