Acting upon a specific intelligence, the Officers of Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), Meerut Zonal Unit have busted a fake billing racket involved in creating numerous fictitious firms for fraudulent passing on of ITC on the strength of fake invoices without a supply of any actual goods.
Two masterminds, aged 36 & 42 years, residents of South-East Delhi, were operating and managing 23 firms that had been registered under name of various dummy proprietors. They used to procure the supplies of metal scrap from local un-registered dealers without payment of GST and the invoices for the purchase of scrap was generated in the name of these fictitious firms in order to pass on fraudulent ITC to various established buyers and in return, they received 0.5-1% of invoice value as commission. Further, data retrieval from mobile phones and laptops recovered during search lead to the recovery of several incriminating documents related to these fictitious firms such as copies of invoices, e-way bills, transport bills, handwritten entries of cash in notebooks etc. Statements of the office staff of the masterminds also corroborated these findings. Prima facie it is evident that using these 23 firms, both the masterminds have passed on illegal and unlawful ITC to the tune of approx. Rs. 130 Crores without any concomitant supply of goods. Quantum of the fraud and the number of firms involved in this racket is likely to go up in further investigations.
Taking cognizance of the offenses committed by the masterminds both of them have been arrested on 19.08.21 under section 69 of the CGST Act, 2017 and Special CJM has remanded them to Judicial Custody for 14 days.
Further investigation against these firms and the recipient firms are underway.
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