By Our Correspondent
CUTTACK/BHUBANESWAR: State GST Commissioner Sushil Kumar Lohani on Friday said that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) enforcement authorities have unearthed a multi-crore GST fraud in Odisha in which a racket creating fictitious firms and using fake invoices have claimed huge input tax credits.
Talking to reporters in Cuttack, Lohani, who is also State’s Chief Electoral Officer, informed that four persons have been arrested in this connection under relevant Sections of the OGST Act of 2017.
Lohani said the arrested are Rama Chandra Mallick of Jajpur district and Dindayal Agarwal, Aditya Kumar Nayak and Atul Bansal of Rourkela.
“While Bansal is the mastermind behind the multi-crore fraud, the remaining three are in the business of iron and steel goods,” he said, adding that the fraud involves revenue loss of Rs 138 crore to the State exchequer.
Describing the modus operandi of the racket, Lohani said that as many as 20 fictitious firms in the names of housewives, taxi drivers; daily wage earners, plumbers and unemployed youths were created by the racketeers.
With the lure of giving them gainful employments, their identity documents were collected, by the strength of which bank accounts were opened and SIM cards obtained.
Investigations revealed that between August 2018 and September 2019, the fictitious firms through fake invoices made purchases worth over Rs 603 crore and sale of Rs 743 crore in their names without paying tax but availed input tax credit of Rs 128 crore.They also passed on bogus income tax credit worth Rs 138 crore to recipients located both in and outside the State, Lohani said, adding that steps are being taken to recover the input tax credit with interest and penalty.
