FAKE BILLING SCAMS WORTH OVER ₹5K CRORE UNEARTHED: CHEEMA

Blurb

These include fake bills worth ₹860 crore generated by two firms dealing in gold and ₹4,044 crore of 303 firms dealing in iron

Chandigarh

Punjab finance, planning, excise and taxation minister Harpal Singh Cheema on Friday said that an investigation by the state tax department’s enforcement wing has uncovered fake billing scams worth thousands of crores. These include fake bills worth ₹860 crore generated by two firms dealing in gold and those of ₹4,044 crore of 303 firms dealing in iron. Additionally, 68 firms were found to have engaged in fake billing of ₹533 crore after getting their firms registered in others’ names, the minister said.

Addressing a press conference, Cheema said on inspection of a firm dealing in gold in Amritsar, the enforcement wing found that fake bills of gold worth ₹336 crore were made by a firm for sale and purchase of gold. The registration of the two firms from which gold purchase was shown had been cancelled, he added.

Referring to a Ludhiana-based firm which did similar manipulation in gold transactions, the finance minister said that it made gold sale-purchase against fake bills worth ₹424 crores. In this case also, the registration of the two firms from which the gold purchase was shown had been cancelled as these firms also had no record of any purchase transaction.

Giving information about the fake sale-purchase of iron worth ₹4,044 crore by 303 firms, the finance minister said that 11 firms out of these are registered with Punjab, 86 with other states, and 206 with the central government. He said the state tax department has taken action against all 11 firms and their registration has been cancelled or suspended, and the action is ongoing as per the law, while the list of the remaining 206 firms has been given to the authorities concerned of the central government.

Cheema further gave details of 68 firms involved in fake billing registered in other persons’ names. He said the department has identified five persons and filed an FIR against them at Ludhiana, and a total of 11 persons have been named.

Bogus billing of ₹533 crore has been found in this case, due to which nearly ₹100 crore of fake input tax credit has been claimed.

On efforts being made by the state to prevent tax evasion, the finance minister said the tax department is linking the GST registration in the state with Aadhar-based biometric authentication so that the persons registering in the name of others can be identified and caught in time. Due to initiatives like setting up of the Tax Intelligence Unit (TIU), and State Intelligence and Preventive Unit (SIPU) etc, the state government has succeeded in ensuring more than 13% growth in GST collection while during the previous government, this was limited to only 6%, he added.

The finance minister was accompanied by additional chief secretary-cum-financial commissioner (taxation) Vikas Pratap, excise and taxation commissioner Varun Roojam and joint commissioner (taxation) Jaskaran Singh Brar.

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2024-07-27T01:06:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd