Mr Adeyinka Adeyemi: Co-Founder & Chairman

Adeyinka spent 30 years operating as a banking and payments executive. Served as the Assistant General Manager (Electronic Banking) of Société Générale Bank Nigeria. Founded the Smartcard Society of Nigeria in 2002 and served as the Executive Secretary/CEO of the association. Adeyinka served on the Central Bank committee on payment systems. Founder & CEO of PrepayGo (a payments company).

Mr Adeyemi has a BSc & MSc from University of Ibadan and a MBA from IESE Business School, University of Navara, Barcelona, Spain.

Mr Shakiel Malik: Co-Founder & CEO

Shakiel spent 20 years working as an executive in the sales and marketing of financial technologies. Notable former roles have included Chief Revenue Officer, Corporate Development Officer at Desucla Limited, a fiscal-tech organisation based in London. VP Sales EMEA Oracle Corporation (London) for Enterprise Software into the financial sector. He was part of the European (EMEA) component of the global management team that took a global Oracle startup business unit from conception to maturity. VP Sales EMEA Thompson Reuters (London) for Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) software targeted at stock market listed corporations in Europe. Founder & CEO Artificial Intelligence Company (sold IP).

Shakiel has an Electronics Engineering Degree from University of London.

Mr Kazeem Tewogbade: Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Kazeem also co-founded and led Bluechip Technologies Ltd from conception to establishing it is a market leader in the Nigerian IT marketplace. He has been an expert data architect with over 23 years of experience in the IT industry, helping clients align IT strategies with corporate strategic objectives.

Kazeem has a Degree in Computer Science from University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Mr Olaleye Adebiyi: Tax Advisor – Africa

Olaleye Adebiyi is the Co-Regional Managing Partner for Africa and the Office Managing Partner of Andersen in Nigeria.

He is a renowned tax expert with about 34 years of experience in tax planning, mergers and acquisitions, advisory, and compliance transactions involving oil and gas, telecommunications, foreign investment and privatization in Nigeria. As a leading tax expert, Olaleye has handled various portfolios and advised numerous client on tax issues, laws and regulations and has won landmark cases involving novel and complex tax issues. Olaleye has also acted as a Tax Expert Witness in various arbitration proceedings.

Olaleye’s practice started from Arthur Andersen in 1991, where he rose to the position of Group Head in 2002. After that, he joined the firm of Aluko & Oyebode as the Partner and Head of the Tax and Business Regulatory Services Unit. He left Aluko & Oyebode in 2005 to set up WTS Adebiyi & Associates before joining Andersen in Nigeria in 2017.

Olaleye is the current Chairman of the Taxation Committee of the Section of Business Law of the Nigerian Bar Association.

He has also written many articles in law journals and regularly speaks at various tax seminars and conferences. He often features as a tax commentator in National newspapers.

He recently translated and published the Personal Income Tax Act of Nigeria in four native languages in a bid to create more awareness about the law to individuals who may not understand or read English, but are more comfortable speaking and reading in their native languages.

Olaleye has a Bachelor of Law (LLM) Degree from the University of Ife, a Masters Degree in Law (LLM) from Obafemi Awolowo University and a Post Call BL Law from the Ghana School of Law. 

Mr Richard Baxter: Strategy Advisor

Richard Baxter is a founder and director of Desucla. Richard was formerly head of indirect tax at Arthur Andersen UK and head of indirect tax technology at Deloitte. Richard has served in interim roles as head of VAT of Lehman Bros in Ch11 and at P&G Pharma. In 2014 Richard led a project for the European Commission examining the performance of the Task Force for Greece. The recommendations of this report led to the creation of the Structural Support Reform Service within the EU to ensure all member states have appropriate infrastructure to support the complexity of modern tax management. Richard created Desucla after an approach asking him to try to create a solution to address the challenge of applying an antiquated fiscal representation model to large volumes of non-resident merchants trading on Europe’s online markets.

Richard is a Chartered Tax Adviser and has a Degree in PPE from Oxford University.