Mumbai: 40 held, Rs 600 crore tax recovered in 4 months drive by CGST

The officials of Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) in a special drive have unearthed more than 500 cases of tax evasions and have arrested 40 persons in these cases in the past four months. The agency has detected tax evasion of Rs 4550 crores in these four months and has done tax recovery of Rs 600 crores, the agency officials claimed.

"A special anti-tax evasion drive has been initiated by the CGST Mumbai Zone since the past four months. In this special drive, a trained set of officers used data analytics and network analysis tools to identify fake Input Tax Credit (ITC) networks and potential cases of tax evasion. During this four-month-old drive, more than 500 tax evasion cases have been booked leading to the arrest of 40 persons, detection of tax evasion of Rs 4550 crores and tax recovery of Rs 600 crores has been done," said a CGST official.

He added, "The officers of Mumbai zone are also minutely analysing business transactions related to digital economy like online gaming, Non Fungible Tokens, e-commerce to identify the areas of possible tax evasion. Recently, a case of GST evasion by cryptocurrency exchange WazirX was also detected by CGST Mumbai Zone and GST of Rs 49.2 crores were recovered during the course of investigation. The department is going to intensify the anti-tax evasion drive against the fraudsters and tax evaders in the coming weeks."

On Saturday, officials of Navi Mumbai CGST Commissionerate had busted a fake GST ITC racket involving GST of Rs 70 crores. This network, which involves more than 14 business entities, that had issued bogus invoices more than Rs 385 crores without any receipt or supply of goods. The network is spread across Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Raigad, Thane, Pune and Nagpur cities. On January 03, the officers of Thane CGST Commissionerate had arrested a father-son duo for allegedly running a fake ITC network of Rs 22 crores. On January 05, the officers of Mumbai Central Commissionerate had arrested a timber merchant for allegedly availing fake ITC of Rs 5.47 crores from non-existing entities.