Rs 613 million Sales Tax fraud unearthed

LAHORE: Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation, Lahore, has detected the huge General Sales Tax (GST) evasion of Rs 613 million by a group of fraudsters.
Sources revealed that Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation (DII) had registered an FIR against 32 tax evaders and apprehended the mastermind of plot, Ejaz Latif, who was implicated in illegal input tax adjustment on the basis of false sales tax invoices.
A senior FBR official revealed that the DII has recovered substantial evidence and records from Ejaz Latif, including user IDs, pin codes, passwords, sales tax returns, correspondence with the FBR pertaining to sales tax registration and NTN issuance, discrepancy notices of various units and formats of sales tax invoices of fictitious units. Sources have revealed that the alleged mastermind confessed that he was operating 20 fictitious units for generating fake sales tax invoices. Further, disclosures are expected.
It has been revealed that tax evaders include units engaged in manufacturing and supply of automobiles, plastics, paper and textiles. The manufacturers and traders against whom FIRs have been lodged, amongst many others, include:
Tayyab Ibrahim Director of Sachal Construction, Islamabad, Abdul Qayyum owner of Star Asia, Lahore and Jamil Ahmad Meyo, owner of Hi-Tech Electrical Engineering and Services, Lahore have been arrested for complicity in the plot. Investigation teams are raiding premises of other suspects whose names are included in the FIR. Informed sources revealed that this new exposure of Rs 613 million in the already detected amount of Rs 1.506 billion, thus totaling the amount of tax evasion to Rs 2.119 billion in this case.
It is notable that the number of fake suppliers has risen to 110 and number of beneficiaries units surged to 1,785. Out of the detected amount of Rs 2,119 million, Rs 692 million has already been recovered from the tax evaders and for the rest, efforts are under way to recover the same.