Three taxation dept officials suspended

Tribune News Service

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Moga, October 12

A scam pertaining to the ‘bogus’ refund of value added tax (VAT) by the Excise and Taxation Department to a construction company and a few other firms has come to light in Moga district.

After preliminary inquiries, the state government has suspended Assistant Excise and Taxation Commissioner (AETC) Tejvir Singh (currently posted at Ludhiana), Excise and Taxation Officer (ETO) of Moga Jagtar Singh and Excise and Taxation Inspector Rajni Devgan from service and initiated departmental inquiries against them.

It has been learnt that DM Construction Company, Baghapurana, “connived” with the suspended officials to get VAT refunds of about Rs 90 lakh pertaining to the last two financial years. The exact amount of refund made to this company in the past couple of years is still under assessment. A fresh assessment of the taxes was also underway.

Although, the then AETC of Moga, Tejvir Singh, did not have the financial powers to refund such a huge amount, which was received from the company as advance tax, after final calculations, but he reportedly divided this amount into few installments of Rs 19 lakh each to refund the money.

The excise department has now ordered a random checking of all VAT refunds given in the past five years in the Moga district to various companies.

The present AETC posted at Moga, Tarsem Sehgal, confirmed that a checking of VAT refunds made in the past few years was underway.

In reply to a question, he said DM Construction Company had returned Rs 2.35 crore to the department along with penalty. “We have recovered the financial losses suffered by the state exchequer from the company and further scrutiny of the accounts of this company is in progress,” he said.

Another senior officer of the department claimed that a powerful lobby of the excise and taxation officers in connivance with industrialists, traders and builders/developers has caused a huge loss to the state exchequer.

Notably, more than Rs-25 crore evasion of tax by auto dealers and few other firms had also come to light in the district in the last couple of years.