Five people from Surat, Gujarat, have been arrested in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore city in connection with a Rs 700 million Goods and Services Tax (GST) credit fraud.
According to the Madhya Pradesh police, the accused ran a fake GST input tax credit (ITC) racket by forming a network of 500 shell companies on paper using forged documents, addresses, and false identities.
They created an input tax credit of more than Rs 700 crore by issuing fake invoices through these bogus firms, a joint investigation by the Central GST Commissionerate in Indore and the Madhya Pradesh police’s cyber cell has revealed.
The investigation also shows that the accused routed the transactions through digital wallet accounts linked to different mobile numbers in order to avoid normal banking channels. This was done to reduce the chances of being caught through a regular transaction trail, police said.
The suspects, all between the ages of 25 and 35, were apprehended on May 25 in Surat, Gujarat, and brought to Indore for questioning. They’re all said to be high school dropouts.