DGGI officials bust syndicate that issued fake invoices worth Rs 4,521 cr

Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) officials have busted a syndicate that issued fake invoices involving a taxable value of approx. Rs. 4,521 crore having ITC implication of approx. Rs 741 crore. 

The mastermind behind the whole racket had been arrested on Thursday, informed the government on Friday.

The DGGI had recently booked a case against fake firms, which had been found to be non-existing at their principal place of business. To trace the real persons behind these fake firms, the physical address from where GST returns were actually filed was ascertained.

Searches were conducted on January 6 at these premises in Delhi. During the search, it was found that the proprietor was engaged in providing services of 'Cloud Storage' on his servers to various customers for maintaining their financial accounts.

On scrutiny of one of the suspicious servers, details of certain firms were found in the tally data. The proprietor informed that this tally data was being maintained by a syndicate based in Kolkata. Details were obtained and searches were subsequently carried out at various premises in Kolkata on January 10. 

During the search, a huge amount of incriminating documents including mobiles phones, various cheque books, stamps of various firms and SIM cards were recovered.

On analysis of electronic devices, documents, mobiles and e-mail of these persons, it was found that these persons were remotely maintaining data on the server found at the premises in Delhi.

Analysis of the tally data has shown that there are 636 firms being operated by this syndicate. The mastermind of the syndicate has accepted that they have issued only invoices in these firms and not supplied any goods against them.

During the course of the investigation, GST amounting to Rs 4.52 crore has been got deposited by reversal of ITC available in the ITC ledger of these firms.  Further, till now approx. Rs. 7 crore lying in various bank accounts of these firms have been frozen.