Trader who caused Rs 2.5 cr GST loss booked

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ambala, July 6

The investigation into the multi-crore Goods and Services Tax (GST) scam has brought out that at least 26 fake firms caused a loss of more than Rs 13 crore to the state exchequer in the past seven months. A senior police officer has confirmed this.

The multi-crore scam was unearthed in November last year when 17 fake companies were found to have caused loss to the exchequer. The Excise and Taxation Department had then detected that more than Rs 13 crore transactions that these firms had made during 10 months last year without paying tax but claiming more than Rs 2.35 crore as input tax credit.

The latest case was reported last week, when it was found that a trader caused a loss of Rs 2.5 crore to the exchequer after registering a fake firm online and availing input tax credit without paying tax to the department.

On the complaint by Excise and Taxation Officer (ETO) Dhanpati Bhardwaj, the police have booked the trader, identified as Sandeep Kumar, under Sections 120B, 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC.

Surprisingly, the case

was registered after more than five months of lodging the complaint.

The senior police officer suspected the involvement of department officials in the racket. “The police are investing how the accused got themselves registered on the GST portal by providing fake information. Since the accused are from Haryana and other states, we are coordinating with our counterparts in other states to track them down,” the cop added.

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