Lucknow: Police will soon start attaching the properties of the members of a well-oiled gang that pulled off a roughly Rs 15,000 crore scam by floating at least 3,000 shell companies on fake Aadhaar and PAN details which they used to create these fake firms to raise e-way bills and avail of input tax credit (ITC) or GST refund from govt.
As per the order, warrants for movable and immovable properties issued belong to Anchit Goyal, Pradeep Goyal, Arjit Goyal, Vikas Dabas and Rohit Nagpal, all from Delhi, as well as Kunal Mehta and Baldev alias Balli of Hisar, Haryana.
“Our teams have been continuously working to nab and take legal action against those involved in the GST fraud. Earlier, procedure under Section 82 (Proclamation for person absconding) of the CrPC was done and, on Monday, the court issued 21 attachment warrants against seven accused. Now, we will start the procedure of CrPC Section 83 (Attachment of property of person absconding) against the absconding named accused,” ACP (Noida) Rajneesh Verma said.
Under this order, police can attach any property belonging to any of the named accused. Properties collectively worth over Rs 25 crore have been identified and will be attached during legal proceedings, officials said.
Among the shell companies that were part of the scam, some had even shown import-export business with companies based abroad in countries like Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Philippines, police officials said.
Previously, police and the GST department froze tax benefits worth Rs 4,000 crore that were claimed on behalf of fake companies linked to the case. Around 3,350 such shell companies have emerged in the probe so far and financial transactions shown by them currently exceed Rs 15,000 crore.
At present, a total of 29 people — including the ‘B Team’ in the nexus — have been arrested and eight bank accounts, having a total balance of Rs 3 crore, have been frozen. The seven suspects whose properties have been attached remain absconding, along with some other identified accused.
