Punjab Taxation Department Arrests 4 For Rs 48 Crore Tax Evasion

Punjabenews: Following the directions of Excise and Taxation Minister Advocate Harpal Singh Cheema to ensure zero tolerance against tax evasion, the GST wing of the Taxation Department, Punjab on Monday arrested 4 persons for GST fraud of Rs. 48 Crore from Jalandhar, in a major operation against tax evaders. The suspects allegedly were running fake firms related to the iron scrap and had obtained GST registrations only to claim Input Tax Credit (ITC) fraudulently by issuing only invoices without the supply of actual goods.

Revealing this in a press communiqué issued here, the official spokesperson of the Taxation department said that Pankaj Kumar alias Pankaj Anand for allegedly running firms named M/s PK Trading Co. M/s Gagan Trading Co., M/s Krrish Trading Co., M/s Balaji Trading Co., M/s Krrish Enterprises and M/s Pankaj Scrap Company, Ravinder Singh for allegedly running M/s Guru HarRai Trading Co., Gurvinder Singh for allegedly running M/s Shiv Shakti Enterprises, and Amirtpal Singh for allegedly running M/s North Vogue were arrested and were produced before the magistrate and sent to judicial custody. . He said that all the four accused are the residents of Jalandhar.

Disclosing further, the spokesperson said that an initial investigation was conducted by the authorities on M/s PV Interior Decor, Jalandhar, which further led to the investigation of M/s Dasmesh Trading Co., Jalandhar, M/s Gur Har Rai Trading Co., Jalandhar, Krrish Trading Co., Jalandhar, M/s Shiv Shakti Enterprise, Jalandhar, M/s Balaji Trading Co., M/s Pankaj Scrap Co., Jalandhar, Gagan Trading Co. and M/s North Vogue Co., Jalandhar. “All these firms were involved in a nexus of fake non-functioning firms, which availed, utilized and passed the fraudulent ITC to actual beneficiaries”, he added.

The spokesperson further added that these persons were only showing circular trading of iron and plastic scrap and in lieu of that they were issuing fake invoices and generating fake e-way bills on scooters, motorcycles, cars, vans, tractors and on fake vehicles having no records. He said that by creating bogus ITC, these persons were passing on the same bogus ITC to the other than end taxpayers who adjusted their tax payment liabilities with this bogus ITC rather than paying the same from their own and thus defrauding the state exchequer.

The spokesperson said that this operation was held under the directions of Vikas Partap, Fianace Commissioner (Taxation) and Kamal Kishor Yadav, Commissioner Taxation, and was supervised by Ravneet Khurana, Additional Commissioner State Tax (Audit), and Viraj S. Tidke, Additional Commissioner State Tax-1(Investigation).