KARACHI: Regional Tax Office (RTO)-II Karachi has initiated criminal proceeding against persons involved in obtaining sales tax refunds on fake and flying invoices.
According to statement on Tuesday, the tax office had unearthed a gang of fraudsters who were engaged in tax fraud on the strength of bogus/fake/flying invoices and claimed dubious/bogus Rs230 million sales tax refunds.
The declared business activity of the units does not match with the nature of goods/raw materials against which purchases / imports have been shown and subsequently bogus inputs have been claimed.
As per chain inquiry, there were dummy buyers and only doing paper transactions.
The RTO-II Karachi lodged FBR against units included: M/s Oriental Chemcial Industries; M/s. Premier Industries/Paramount Industries; M/s. Younus Enterprises/Escord Industries.
The tax office said that the accused/owners of these bogus units were not available in the declared business address. However following measures were taken to retrieve loss of revenue by RTO-II Karachi:
(a) FIRs have been lodged against the all three accused persons/owners before special judge (customs and taxation) Karachi and criminal proceedings have been initiated under Section 37A of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
(b) Names of owners of M/s. Oriental Chemical Industries, M/s. Paramount Industries and M/s. Escord Industries have been sent for Exit Control List (ECL).
The tax office said that all the three cases had been suspended / blacklisted under Section 21(2) of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
It further said that the bank accounts have been attached for recover under Section 48 of the Sales Tax Act, 1990.
“Letters to all banks have also been written for getting information about the beneficiary bank accounts, whereby, cheques issued as result of the generated RPOs were deposited.”
Letters to registrar offices, Bahria Town and DHA Karachi have also been written to get information about properties/assets for recovery purpose.
