Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has registered a case against 79 people and 36 shell companies for tax evasion. The companies are situated in Indore, Ujjain, Neemuch and in New Delhi, said police here on Wednesday. A multi-crore GST, CGST tax evasion came to light when a Indore-based company filed a complaint against Soya Oil Company of Neemuch, EOW investigating officer Anil Shukla said.
In 2019, CGST had received information about tax evasion worth crores of rupees by Agrawal Soya Extract Private Limited Company, Dhamania, Neemuch. While CGST was investigating, Kapil Trading Company of Indore had approached EOW alleging that some company was using their name for doing business. During the investigations, the EOW sleuths found that the 36 shell companies had done Rs 191 crore ‘business’ under the guise of trading in cake and oil. It came to fore that 79 people including Agrawal Soya operator Gopal Singhal, Deepak Singhal had created 36 shell companies for tax evasion. The said companies have so far committed a scam of Rs 191 crore, said the officer. An FIR has been registered against 79 people in connection with the scam, he added. The police have registered the case under section 420,467,468,471 and 120-B of IPC and have started the investigations.
The officers said that in the primary investigation it came to fore that there was bogus trading as ‘nothing was sold, nothing was purchased, but bank transactions had taken place’. Shukla said that the kingpin of the scam is the industrialist who is engaged in soya oil production and trading business.
As now FIR has been registered, the police will check documents related to the scam to bring out hidden facts.
The police will track the money which was circulated in the name of business and trading. The police are going to find out if the business was done to ‘turn the black money into white, if the money was sent overseas, or if there is any foreign funding involved’.
The officer said that the investigations had brought to the fore that the companies committed tax evasion of around Rs 10 crore. But more importantly, the business and trading was done on fake and forged documents which is a crime.
MODUS OPERANDI
Neemuch based company Agrawal Soya Extract Private Limited, Dhamania, in collaboration with a total of 36 bogus firms and their operators between the year 2017 to 2022, prepared fake invoices, bills, receipt and pretended fake purchase and sale of soybean DOC to Gopal Singhal, Shalini Singhal, Deepak Singhal, Navneet Garg as the director of his company Agrawal Soya Extract Pvt Ltd, Neemuch committed fraud by issuing fake bills of dozens of farms including Narayan Freight Carrier, Adarsh Nagar, Indore.
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