Following a search operation, the Gurugram Zonal Unit of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence discovered a significant scam involving 461 shells and bogus firms that were transferring false Input Tax Credit (ITC) of 863 crores. According to a press statement from the Finance Ministry on Thursday notifying the public of the scam, "This racket of passing on fraudulent ITC through fake shell entities was detected when based on intelligence a search was carried out at a secret office being operated for this purpose." "A huge number of forged/morphed/fake soft copies of documents like electricity bills, rent agreements, aadhar cards, driver's licenses, PAN cards, etc. were found in the laptops retrieved from this secret office, which were used to create and run their fake entities," the report by Finance ministry stated.
The Ministry added that the authorities discovered the ITC fraud of $863 million and detained two key agents as a result of their forensic assessment of the computers and other gadgets they had taken from this covert office. It further stated that preliminary research indicates that fake ITC credit has eventually resulted in the discovery of ITC fraud totaling Rs. 863 crores involving fictitious 461 businesses and the arrest of two key actors. Initial findings suggest that the evasion-prone metal/iron and steel industry has ultimately received fake ITC credit. On June 1, Gautam Budh Nagar police nabbed a group for arranging a fraudulent scheme worth over 10,000 crores in a similar case of GST fraud. Thousands of firms were registered as part of the operation using stolen or fictitious identities in order to produce e-way invoices and obtain input tax credits from the government. During the course of the investigation, police detained eight people and discovered 2,660 bogus firms.
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