The Directorate of Goods and Service Tax Intelligence, Ghaziabad Regional Unit has busted a syndicate involved in creating and controlling fake firms and issuing of bills by these fake firms without supplying any Goods or Services and encashment of GST refund.
According to a press release by the Ministry of Finance, after developing precise Intelligence, two office premises were searched from where various incriminating documents/things pertaining to more than 200 fake firms were recovered i.e. mobile phones, digital signatures, debit cards, PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, photos of persons, rent agreements, laptops, pen drives, rubber stamps, keys of offices, SIM cards, cheque books and some 'Kuccha' records.
Further, an in-depth investigation was conducted which revealed that the data of this network is being compiled and used from the cloud. After analysis of the evidence and data, it was revealed that this network consists of 275 bogus firms which exist only on paper. These firms have issued fake invoices having a total value of Rs 3,189 crore involving total GST evasion of Rs 362 crore.
One of the key persons who was instrumental in the collection of identities of individuals for the creation of fake firms namely Tinku Yadav was arrested earlier. Based on the information given by Tinku Yadav and analysis of IP addresses, the actual masterminds of the network namely Vipin Kumar Gupta alias Nikku, and Yogesh Mittal have been apprehended and arrested. It has been learnt that both Vipin Kumar Gupta and Yogesh Mittal are habitual offenders. Both the offenders have been arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) earlier, said the press release.
( With inputs from ANI )
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