ROURKELA: In yet another Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) fraud running into crores of rupees, the Central Preventive Unit (CPU) under Rourkela Commissionerate of Central GST & Excise Department on Tuesday arrested a businessman Kamal Pasari.Pasari was sent to judicial custody for CGST fraud to the tune of `18.84 crore. Joint Commissioner Debjyoti Chakravorty said Pasari owns a business firm -- Aarpee Steels -- and was also operating three other firms registered in the names of his relatives.

He said through these firms, Pasari was receiving and issuing fake invoices without any real transaction. He said in course of investigation, it was found out that Pasari had defrauded `18.84 crore through tax evasion and availing Input Tax Credit.

This comes close on the heels of detection of another fraud with similar modus operandi to the tune of `62 crore on May 3. The Central Intelligence wing of CGST had sent businessman Manas Chandra Baral of the Civil Township area to custody. Baral, through his firms, AS Profile and Balaji Traders, had issued and received fake invoices resulting in CGST evasion of `26 crore and availed Input Tax Credit of `36 crore.

Similarly, in October last year, two businessmen, Narayan Khaitan and Sanjiv Singh, were arrested by Central Intelligence Wing for CGST fraud of around `20 crore. In March last year, Rourkela Commissionerate using extensive dataanalytics technology had detected some business firms involved in tax evasion and recovered `8.5 crore from them. Three other firms were penalised with an amount of `3 crore for non-filing of returns. Sources said 100 fake business firms, under the jurisdiction of Rourkela Commissionerate, have been detected and action is being taken against them.