Two weeks after the Rs 4,120 crore fake billing scam was busted by the state goods and services tax (SGST) department, officials on Monday raided another Aadhaar centre, this time in Bhavnagar. Top officials of the department said mobile numbers linked to at least 1,200 Aadhaar cards were found to have been modified at this centre.
This is a new modus operandi adopted by scamsters to obtain fake GST registrations, which in turn are used to generate bogus bills and fraudulently obtain input tax credit and evade taxes.
Investigation is underway in the second raid. So far, it seems that at least 100 GST registrations have been obtained using Aadhaar cards whose data had been modified here. These GST registrations are being scrutinized further for fake billing. With these figures, a total of 2,821 GST registrations have been identified that were obtained using compromised Aadhaar cards.
From November to February 20, the SGST department detected and cancelled 663 fake GST registrations. These GST numbers had been used to generate fake bills worth Rs 14,596 crore, to evade taxes of Rs 1,140 crore. The department could consider raiding more Aadhaar centres over mismatches in GST registration data.
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