The Central Goods and Service Tax ( GST ) officials in Mumbai arrested a businessman Uday Kantilal Desai, Director of Reena Tiinaz, from Navi Mumbai for issuing fake invoices of Rs 1,000 crore to avail of tax credit worth Rs 441 crore.
Reports said that the accused inflated the turnover of the companies to get more loans from banks and other facilities. Until now, Desai has taken loans of Rs 140 crore from a consortium of banks.
The arrest was recorded by the department officials following a search conducted in eight places of the accused. During the search, it was found that Desai issued these invoices through shell companies without supplying any actual goods. It was also revealed that the invoices were issued in the name of Tashee Enterprise, Prayans Trading and Shri Sai Trading without an actual supply of goods. These companies further issued invoices to two other companies — Om Enterprise and K M Trading. Even in this case, no goods were supplied.
The CGST officials also arrested proprietors of these shell companies allegedly controlled by Desai. They have been identified as Vinayak Mahadev Tawhare, proprietor, Sri Sai Trading; Shekhar Duraiswamy Mudaliyar of KM Trading; and Krunal Madhusudan Desai of Tashee Enterprises.
So far, the CGST officials have made five arrests in this case.
“It appears that this is case of paper transactions only without physical movement of goods. The accused have been remanded up to November 3 by the court,” Raghavendra Pal Singh, Joint Commissioner at CGST, Navi Mumbai, said.
The officials carried out search operations based on specific intelligence gathered under the guidance of Kiran Verma, Commissioner of CGST, Navi Mumbai, and Joint Commissioner Raghavendra Pal Singh.
