HYDERABAD: In a first, the enforcement officers of Telangana commercial taxes department have arrested a Ghaziabad-based dealer for evading GST of Rs 20.08 crore.
The dealer, Kaushik Shakthi Baburam, was nabbed on August 23 and has been remanded to judicial custody for 14 days, ie; till September 5, 2019. The officials found out that the 35-year-old man has floated around 21 firms all over India, including four in Telangana. None of these was found to be existent or operational.
Of the 21 firms, 12 were registered with the GSTN on his name, three on his wife’s name and 6 were registered in the name of his accomplice, who is yet to be caught. The sleuths who have been keeping a watch of Baburam’s activities for some time found that he registered his first company only in January 2019. And then he registered his four companies in Telangana only after March 2019.
What makes the case peculiar is the fact that sleuths have detected inward as well as outward tax frauds.
Baburam has been operating from Delhi and sending goods to Telangana while trying to hoodwink officials by creating a chain of firms in various States.
According to an official, huge loads of scrap metal is sent out from Telangana. Fake invoices worth Rs 150 crore is generated to avail input tax credit fraudulently. “Name it and you have them. Huge number of goods are brought into Telangana but no records of sale are shown. They are also not available in any godowns, which means he has given it all away to various parties under zero,” added the official.
Explaining further, he said, “when goods are sent from Hyderabad to Delhi without paying IGST, it is a huge loss to the State as our share of IGST is gone to the other State. Similarly, if goods are brought in without declaring them, there is a loss of CGST as well as SGST.” The registered addresses of other firms are in Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu etc., and officials have already initiated processes, alerting their counterparts regarding the fraud.
The investigation and operation were carried out by Dr R.Yedukondalu, Deputy Commissioner, Enforcement and his team under the supervision of M.S.Reddy, Special Commissioner, Enforcement, Telangana. Further investigation is on to find out more and involvement of any mastermind behind the fraud.