Surat: Two arrested for GST fraud

Surat, Nov 23, 2023

The economic offences wing (EFW) of Surat police has nabbed two persons who had bought bogus firms to take illegal advantage of input tax credit (ITC) of GST. The two have been identified as Shoban Kureshi and Umang Patel

Surat police had got a complaint that fake stamps of an advocate were used to get GST registration for firms. During investigation, it was found that Bhavnagar-based Kureshi had bought a firm called ‘Ketan Enterprise’ with a GST number from Bhavnagar-based Imran Meman alias B D Bapu. Meman had created one more such firm called ‘Shah Enterprise’ which had been sold to Ahmeabad-based Dharmesh Gandhi. Surat-based Patel had later bought that firm from Gandhi.

Both Kureshi and Patel did transactions worth crores to get benefit of illegal ITC. Kureshi had got Rs 1.68 crore ITC while Patel had got Rs 1.57 crore ITC.

A police officer said, “Meman is the mastermind behind such bogus firms. He would use bogus documents and bogus stamps to create such firms to get GST numbers. After that, he would sell those firms at Rs 35,000 to Rs 50,000 each. The GST scamsters would do turnover under Rs 5 crore and then close the firms as GST department usually scrutinizes firms with more than Rs 5 crore turnover.’’ tnn

[The Times of India]