Jaime is worried. His boss has told him that some of the clients of the Microfinance Institution - IMF manage three Financial Statements: one for the Tax Collector, another for Credit Institutions and a third for managerial purposes.
He has also indicated that sometimes the difference between actual sales and declared sales can exceed 100%, which is "normal, since they are informal entrepreneurs, many of whom have grown up with the MFI."
Jaime knows that what his clients are doing is not good and it is worse to serve them. At least that's what your personal training tells you. However, his boss tells him that he does not have to think like that since he "does not work for the Tax Collector, but for the MFI." Also, “you cannot lose business on principle. The MFI lives by numbers, not by stories ”. On the other hand, "it has always been like that and if they don't take care of them, others will."
Situations such as those described happen daily in MFIs. Honest people like Jaime go through a cognitive dissonance, which is "the tension or internal disharmony of the system of ideas, beliefs, emotions and attitudes (cognitions) that a person perceives for accepting a behavior that conflicts with their beliefs." The downside of all this is that for the dissonance to disappear, Jaime would have to find another job or change his cognitions. If it is the latter, they would have to modify their way of thinking or “believe” in fantasies, such as that “evaders are informal”, which is common to hear from MFIs to justify their questionable behavior.
What Jaime's boss does not know is that by acting in this way, in addition to being ethically incorrect, it contributes to Money Laundering, which not only comes from hiding or disguising the illicit origin of goods or resources that come from drug trafficking, but also of tax fraud, as indicated in Article 6 of the Criminal Law against Money Laundering - Law 27765 (Peru).
For greater detail, fraud constitutes the action and / or effect of fraud, which means eluding or circumventing the payment of taxes or contributions to the State.
On the other hand, maintaining this type of procedure generates a double ethic in the MFI staff, by allowing service to tax evaders (tax defrauders), justifying them as if they were “informal” and, on the other hand, demanding transparency in development of their activities?
That is why it does not surprise me when I hear comments about the high incidence of fraud and bankruptcies that occur in some MFIs and that is: You cannot walk in the mud without getting your feet dirty.
