look news india
Mumbai: Investigation by the GST department in Pune has revealed a Rs 8000 crore GST scam of setting up 246 shell companies and wrongly taking input tax credit. The investigation into the fake company registered in the name of the auto driver has also reached Mumbai, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. Its mastermind Ashrafbhai Ibrahimbhai Kalavadia, resident of Surat, has already been arrested. Now the GST Intelligence Team has filed a formal complaint in this scam.
Ashrafbhai Ibrahimbhai Kalavadiya, resident of Surat, opened 246 fake companies and along with other accused, committed a scam of Rs 8 thousand crores. DGGI Pune zonal unit officer Rishi Prakash lodged a complaint at Koregaon Park police station in Pune on Friday and the police registered an FIR and conducted further investigation.
Along with the main accused in the scam, Ashrafbhai Kalawadia (50), the police have booked Nitin Barge, Faisal Mewalal, Nizamuddin Khan, Amit Tejbahadur Singh (Ulhasnagar), Rahul Baraiya, Kaushik Makwana, Jitendra Gohel and others under sections 420, 465. Have registered. The offense was registered under sections 467, 471, 120 (B) 34 of the Indian Penal Code and various sections of the IT Act.
According to the FIR registered in this regard, in October 2023, the DGGI team found several suspicious transactions of a company named Pathan Enterprises located at Girni-Shewalwadi on the Pune-Solapur Highway. Upon investigating the matter, DGGI officials found that no such company existed at the said location or any other location.
Further investigation into the case revealed that one such company was registered in the name of Pathan Shabbir Khan Anwar Khan in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, while further investigation by the DGGI team revealed that Khan was also an autorickshaw driver. On further questioning Khan about this, he was very surprised and he said that no such company was registered in his name and he expressed complete ignorance about the matter.
Alarmed by this, DGGI officials conducted a thorough investigation of a unique mobile number and e-mail address used to register all these fake companies, including Pathan Enterprises. Meanwhile, a person named Jeet Kukadiya, who had an account in ICICI Bank, came to the notice of the investigation team in Rajkot. However, further investigation here revealed that Kukadiya was working as a private security guard, but it was also revealed that Kukadiya had opened accounts for accused Kaushik Makwana and Jitendra Gohel. However, Kukadiya himself never did any transaction from this account.
On the basis of important information received by DGGI in this investigation, raids were conducted in cities like Pune, Mumbai, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. At the end of this investigation, it was revealed that the mastermind and main accused of this case was Kalavadiya who was running many fake companies including Pathan Enterprises. After this, Kalavadiya was arrested on 12 March 2024 from a hotel in Mira-Bhayander. 21 mobile phones, two laptops, 11 SIM cards, bank debit cards in the name of different people, check books, rubber stamps of different companies etc. were recovered from Kalavadiya.
Further investigation of Kalavadiya revealed that he had allegedly created fake companies with the help of the seized items. Apart from this, these companies carried out outright fake transactions. Kalavadia used to buy fake GST firms to generate fake GST bills. However, he did not actually sell any goods or pay any kind of GST.
DGGI officials arrested him under the Goods and Services Tax Act and produced him before a Pune court. He is currently in judicial custody in Yerwada jail. Further investigation revealed that Nitin Barge was operating his purported bank accounts and shell companies in Mumbai. While Mewalal was allegedly handling the cash transactions of Kalavadiya. Another Mumbai-based accused, Nizamuddin Khan, allegedly provided him with SIM cards and KYC details of common people to open bank accounts. The FIR states that Amit Singh was allegedly helping in setting up fake companies and Rahul Baraiya was allegedly helping in selling these fake companies.