Rs. 1,000 crore GST evasion racket busted

The Tax Officials under goods and service tax (GST) has busted a syndicate that fraudulently claimed Input Tax Credit of over Rs 1,000 crore through a network of 232 fake firms.

The investigation was initiated by the anti-evasion branch of Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Commissionerate, Meerut in October 2023 which detected that a large syndicate was fraudulently claiming Input Tax Credit (ITC) by way of fake billing.

“The investigation conducted so far has revealed that a total number of 232 fake firms, with 91 firms registered on a single mobile number, are registered at various places across the country and have passed an inadmissible ITC of around Rs. 1,048 crore. Total value of goods shown to be supplied through these firms is around Rs. 5,842 crore,” the finance ministry said in a statement.

Many ‘Full Fledged Money Changer Companies’ (FFMCs) were used for parking/routing of funds generated through fraudulently passed on ITC, it said.

These firms were operated by mastermind Praveen Kumar, who was filing the GST returns for all the fake firms. Apart from the common mobile number which was used to create and manage 91 firms, 10 more mobile phones and 03 laptops were impounded from the possession of Parveen Kumar. The officials have also attached five bank accounts that were used to park the proceeds by the syndicate.