Rs 3,000 Crore Fake GST Invoice Scam Busted: 27 Shell Firms, Rs 720 Crore Fake Bills

The police have registered an FIR against five individuals in connection with the fake GST invoice racket of Rs 3,000 crore, the police said on Saturday. Suraj Kumar Yadav, Enforcement Directorate (ED) assistant director, had registered a complaint in the present case.

The accused have been recognised as Amit Kumar Goyal; his brother Manish Kumar, Gaurav Aggarwal, all residents of Mandi Gobindgarh, and Gurdeep Singh and Balwant Singh, residents of Lohar Majra in Fatehgarh Sahib.

According to the police, the five accused had created dozens of bogus companies, and to create a money trail, they used similar addresses, phone numbers and email IDs. The Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) had investigated the data concerning the fraudulent transactions.

As per the complaint registered, the accused generated counterfeit GST invoices, circulating the funds through multiple dummy corporations. They then funnelled the illicit proceeds into Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) bank accounts held with a private bank. It has also been uncovered that the suspects had withdrawn a large amount of cash from the bank in order to avoid tax deduction at source (TDS) under the Income Tax Act.

Around 25 bank accounts were allegedly used by the accused, through which about Rs 3,089.57 crore was withdrawn. As per the sources, the accused had established 27 shell companies and generated Rs 720.97 crore in fake invoices, using the same to illicitly avail Rs 108.49 crore of Input Tax Credit (ITC). Among the total shell companies in question, two were created using Amit’s PAN, while the remaining were created using the KYC documents of financially weak persons.

During the search operation, the investigators recovered 54 cheque books, 46 ATM cards, 11 PAN cards, stamps, phones and laptops. The police clarified that the transactions in question only existed on paper; no actual movement of goods had taken place.