CGST officials bust network of 23 firms over bogus ITC claims

A finance ministry statement said that the modus operandi involved floating of multiple firms with the intent to avail or utilise and passing on of inadmissible credit.

The firms involved in this network are Girdhar Enterprises, Arun Sales, Akshay Traders, Shree Padmavati Enterprises and 19 others. These 23 firms were floated in order to generate goods-less invoices with intent to pass on fraudulent ITC without paying actual GST to the government.

Late Dinesh Gupta, Shubham Gupta, Vinod Jain and Yogesh Goel were associated in the said business of generating and selling fake invoices, it said. These entities are dealing in various commodities and involved in generation of goods-less invoices worth Rs 551 crore and passing inadmissible ITC amounting to around Rs 91 crore.

All the three accused tendered their voluntary statement admitting their guilt, the ministry said.

Shubham Gupta, Vinod Jain and Yogesh Goel knowingly committed offences under Section 132(1)(b) and 132(1)(c) of the CGST Act, 2017 which are cognizable and non-bailable offences as per the provisions of Section 132(5) and are punishable under clause (i) of the sub section (1) of Section 132 of the Act.

Accordingly, they were arrested under Section 132 of the CGST Act on Saturday, July 10 and remanded to judicial custody by the duty Metropolitan Magistrate for 14 days. Further investigations are in progress, the statement added.