THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The GST department has unearthed irregularities committed through fake billing to the tune of Rs 1,170 crore.
The drive ‘Operation Palm Tree’ on 180 scrap business dealers detected GST evasion of Rs 209 crore.
The inspections were started on Thursday early morning at 5 am with 300 GST department officials taking part in it. The inspections were held at 101 business centres. Three persons were taken into custody during the inspections.
It was revealed that the owners were producing fake invoices and using them to make input credit fraudulent works.
The inspections went on till evening. During the inspections, it was found that a fake GST registration was made in the name of a man at Nattassery in Kottayam to do input credit frauds.
When a man responded to an advertisement for a job in the Gulf, his Aadhaar number and personal details were sought by the advertiser. Once the OTP number generated in the mobile phone was shared, GST registration was done in the person’s name without his knowledge. It was also revealed that the fraudsters also conducted transactions through the person’s bank account.