Punjab’s Department of Excise and Taxation on Thursday said it has busted an alleged Goods and Services Tax (GST) bogus billing scam in Patiala, involving 60 crore.
Additional Excise and Taxation Commissioner-cum-Director (Investigation) Navdeep Kaur Bhinder said that a businessman in Patiala’s Khanauri Mandi dealing in iron and scrap has been found to be involved in the unscrupulous activity.
“After following due process of law and conducting detailed enquires, the accused,, who is proprietor of Ganpati Motor Store, has been arrested,” she said in Patiala.
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‘Fake invoices’
“The owner of the firm used to procure fake GST invoices of iron and scrap from Delhi without physical delivery of goods. It has also been detected that some of the vehicles used in the transportation of goods were found to be scooters and motorcycles. A total of 945 vehicles were shown to have transported iron and scrap goods from Delhi to Khanauri Mandi, whereas after verification it was found that only 67 vehicles were shown to have passed through a Rohtak-based toll plaza. The verification of these 67 vehicles revealed that these vehicles had actually not passed through the toll plaza and only fake toll plaza receipts had been generated,” said Ms Kaur, adding that the fact has been confirmed by toll plaza authorities.
“In this case the accused was creating bogus input tax credit running into crores of rupees and was further passing on to various dealers of Punjab,” she said.
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Ms. Kaur said investigation was on to identify other unscrupulous people involved in the scam.
“We also plan to launch a campaign against dealers, traders involved in cases of tax evasion,” the excise official said.