In a joint operation, the Director General of GST Intelligence and the
Director General of Revenue Intelligence have found dozens of bogus
firms and exporters who were fraudulently claiming Integrated Goods and
Services Tax (IGST) from the government. The raids were conducted on
Wednesday by 1,200 officers at 336 different locations spread across 27
cities. It showed a potential fraud of around Rs 470 crore of input tax
credit on an invoice of Rs 3,500 crore. Most of these firms were small
businesses. “Out of the 198 companies we checked, 78 did not exist,”
said a top government official aware of the matter who did not wished to
be named. The largest cache of bogus firms were found in west Delhi. Of
the 53 firms searched in the capital, 46 did not exist.