Indore businessman arrested in Rs 233 crore tax evasion from Mumbai hotel

MUMBAI: The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) department on late Monday arrested Kishore Wadhwani, the mastermind of Rs 233 crore GST evasion scam from a five-star hotel in Mumbai.
The officials of CGST Indore unit on Tuesday produce Wadhwani before the 47 Metropolitan Magistrate court through video conferencing.The court allowed the officials to take Wadhwani’s transit remand and produce him before the Indore court on June 18.
Sources said that CGST department on the specific information carried raids and searches of various companies in Indore and Ujjain and unearthed that few businessmen had indulged in Rs 233 crore GST duty evasion. The CGST arrested four businessmen namely Sanjay Mata, Vijay Nair, Ashok Daga and Amit Bothra. All these four accused in connivance with Wadwani were indulging supplying, dealing and selling huge quantity of various brands of pan masala, tobacco and their raw material without issuing GST invoices and with intention to evade tax payment of GST. The accused were also booked under the IPC sections of cheating, breach of trust and criminal conspiracy.
During their interrogations the accused have admitted to had conspired with Wadhwani and indulged in huge GST evasion by clandestinely removing pan-masala without GST payments and Wadhwani was having effective control over their factory operations and ultimate financial beneficiary in the pan masala trade. Officials said that the evaded tax quantification was done on the basis of several digital devices such as mobile phones, computers and laptops seized from the accused. Officials have also stumbled upon screen shots of Kaccha Parchi (rough hand written chits) shared among each others. Advocate Sujay Katawala who appeared on behalf of Wadhwani said, "The date and time of arrest is fabricated as officers were in his hotel room from June 14 at 2.30 am till Tuesday at 10 am. The court must investigate and call for the CCTV footage of the hotel."