Vizag GST officials bust tax credit racket, kingpin arrested

Visakhapatnam: The zonal unit of the director-general of GST Intelligence based in Visakhapatnam busted a major fake input tax credit racket in the gold bullion market and arrested one person on 21 November. He has been remanded to judicial custody.

Joint director Mayank Sharma, in a release, said various dummy and non-operating firms were created with fictitious addresses in and around Guntur. Simultaneous searches were carried out in various places in Andhra Pradesh. These searches revealed that the racketeers have passed on fake credit of around Rs. 8 crore to various bullion trading in Andhra Pradesh. The kingpin behind this racket, a 25-year-old man from Guntur, was arrested. The officials of the GST Intelligence wing also attached gold and silver worth Rs. 1.8 crore to protect the government revenue. Further investigation is underway, the release said.

The GST officials recently intensified their efforts to curb ITC rackets which led to tax evasion. In November alone, seven cases were booked involving the detection of 32 dummy and non-existing GST registrations. These detections involved fake transactions to the tune of Rs. 400 crore involving in duty evasion of Rs. 28 crore. Two people were arrested in these cases.