Page 171 - The Circle of Life

Contract registers are a speciality of mine which I thoroughly enjoy. We also

recommend scanning all contracts and company registration documents
including tax etc documents to PDF and keep the originals at your bank in a
safety box. It happens that fire destroys everything (not always an accident) or

water damage occurs. Also remember that files needs to be kept for a few years

before it is destroyed. I know secure storage cost a lot of money.

Why is Compliance so important besides the obvious?

A silly example I saw during the years. You have a business card stating that

you are the CEO or director of such and such a corporate. But the corporate
papers at the company office do not reflect that (because you may be new or

the company documents outdated) then you may be accused of fraud and
arrested on trump up charges. It sounds silly and it is for you had no desire to

defraud anyone but it may cost you a few days in jail which may be a death
sentence.

It also happens that the shareholders change but it is not updated in the
company registers. Then you have a problem to get the previous ones to sign

legal documents to implement the changes. They will charge you money for their
time and it may be expensive for they tend to be aggrieved and most

unreasonable. Or they always travel and are never available. They know all the
tricks of passive resistance and showing you what a mistake you made to get rid

of them in the past.

Worse than this the banks will give you problems for they need to update their
records all the time. As something as small as this may cost you money and a

lot of anguish and I saw it happen. Don’t take short cuts because it is Africa and
don’t listen to half-baked ideas which cost which we discussed above regarding

quick solutions. There is no such thing in Africa. We have all the time in the
world.

Information is always available

Every Tom, Dick, and his mate Harry will tell you that no information is available
in Africa. For instance the company documents etc. It is rubbish! Every African

country has the structures in place for these documents to be available on

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