Visakhapatnam: Visakhapatnam GST Intelligence arrested the mastermind behind the Rs. 31 crore fake input tax credit racket.
The officers of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), Visakhapatnam, detained a 34- year-old resident of Hyderabad who had set up 20 fake entities, bascially in the districts of Guntur and Hyderabad. These entities were used to create a complex network of fake ITC (input tax credit) generating entities in different levels and were spread along different states in a bid to camouflage the fraudulent transactions and thereby avoid detection.
These entities generated fake invoices to the tune of around Rs. 265 crores, involving passing on fake ITC to many functional companies to the tune of Rs. 31 crores, allowing them to fraudulently utilize the same and evade payment of taxes.
Since November 2020, there has been a country-wide special drive against fake ITC frauds. The Visakhapatnam DGGI zonal unit has, during this period, registered several cases and unearthed nearly 180 fake companies, leading to the detection of tax evasion to the tune of Rs. 160 crore and arrest of five individuals.
