The GST department, Pune arrested a person for allegedly involved in an evasion of rupees 80 crores by issuing fraudulent invoices worth Rs 415 crores.
The Directorate General of GST Intelligence’s (DGGI’s) Pune zone unit on Sunday said that it has unearthed an Rs 80 crore “fraud” which is suspected to have been perpetuated through procurement of “bogus invoices” from markets and arrested one person from Mumbai.
the arrested person Modsingh Padamsingh Sodha was found to be operating over 10 dummy companies that had issued fraudulent invoices worth Rs 415 crores, the DGGI said.
The officials suspected that the bogus invoices might have been utilized to get enhanced credit limits from banks, “thereby laying the foundation of a future banking fraud”.
“No goods were supplied and all transactions were on paper. GST fraud of around Rs 80 crore has been detected in this case, which was paid through set-off of fraudulently availed Input Tax Credit on the basis of invoices procured through the market without receipt of goods,” it stated.
During the course of the search, the department recovered Rs 2.18 crore from the dummy companies. “Investigation is going on and it has been found that this is just a tip of the iceberg,” it claimed.
The accused was produced before a court in Pune which remanded him in judicial custody of 14 days.
“After analyzing a large amount of data, some key players of this racket were identified and simultaneous raids were conducted in Mumbai and Pune by the officers,” stated the release.
A large number of similar entities involved in this fraud have been identified which indicate that it is a much bigger racket and its threads are spread all over India, it said.
The amount of fraudulent ITC detected, in this case, has reached the figure of over Rs 220 crores and is likely to further go up, it said.
“The value of supplies as per the bogus invoices detected till date is around Rs 900 crore, which indicates the extent of bogus transactions, which appear to have been also done for inflating turnover of companies/firms which may have been utilized to get enhanced credit limits from banks, thereby laying foundation of a future banking fraud,” the office said in its note.
