GST Intelligence officers arrest MD of Visakhapatnam Infra Company for fraud
By Newsmeter Network Published on 16 Oct 2019 8:30 PM IST
Visakhapatnam: The officers of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), Visakhapatnam, arrested the Managing Director of a company engaged in infrastructure projects and government contracts on Wednesday. The company received and issued fake invoices without the actual supply of services to the tune of Rs 450 crore.
The officials said that it is one of the biggest GST frauds detected in recent times by DGGI in Vizag. The officials, through coordinated searches conducted in various parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, found incriminating documents. Upon interrogation, the 45-year-old accused confessed to the crimes, besides artificially boosting the turnover of the company. The Input Tax Credit (ITC) thus availed was passed on to other major infrastructure companies for further utilisation.
This same modus operandi was followed by using multiple GST registrations of the company. Preliminary investigation revealed that from September 2018 to August 2019, almost Rs 450 crore worth of fake invoices were generated involving ineligible ITC worth Rs 67 crore. The police arrested the accused in Vizag under the provisions of GST laws and remanded to judicial custody till October 30.
Since the inception of the GST regime, the Visakhapatnam Zonal unit of DGGI had solved a similar case involving fake invoices of around Rs 50 crore. Rs 40 crore, out of the total, has been realised, the official said.
IT may be recalled that officials arrested 48-year-old Vennapusa Venkata Subba Reddy, the mastermind behind setting up of 70 dummy firms. He issued fake invoices to the tune of Rs 400 crore and availed fraudulent ITC to the tune of Rs 60 crore in Vizag in 2018.
These dummy firms were registered based on PAN/Aadhar details of known acquaintances of the accused. After obtaining GST registration in their names, massive amounts of transactions had taken place on paper. The accused opened and operated several bank accounts from a single branch in Guntur.
