FBR unearths country’s mega tax fraud worth Rs314 billion

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has unearthed the country’s biggest tax fraud worth Rs314 billion committed by a fake company, K H & Sons. The tax fraud was detected by the Director-General Internal Audit Inland Rev-enue team. The K H & Sons company only existed on paper and is registered with a benami individual Muhammad Kashif.
The fake company’s documents showed it was running the business of iron and steel, whereas, it mentioned addresses of Liaquat Market, Agri Market and M A Jinnah Market.
Sources revealed the name of the fake company was used for different illegal ac-tivities.
Surprisingly, the FBR has not yet registered any case against Rs314 billion of tax fraud despite the revelations. Sources said that the accused could flee abroad in case of further delay in the registration of the First Information Report (FIR).
Yesterday, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) arrested four suspects who were involved in Rs11 billion tax invoices scam.
As per details, FBR foiled a gang of fake /flying sales tax invoice mafia and ar-rested four suspects allegedly involved in the scam.
The FBR stated that one accused was arrested when filing fake sales tax returns of various dummy firms from his house.
The second accused was arrested from PRAL Call Centre, Islamabad who was working as a facilitation officer at PRAL.
Furthermore, the FBR officials also recovered Rs1.6 billion fake output tax data from the accused official PRAL computer. All four accused belong to Karachi.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) decid-ed to launch a countrywide crackdown against tax evasion.
The taxation authority prepared a list of 11,000 persons from major cities in-cluding Lahore and Karachi, sources said. The list included industrialists, mill owners, traders, property dealers and wholesalers, according to sources.
The grip will be tightened against tax defaulters, and they will also be arrested, sources said. The FBR’s list of tax evaders included people from Karachi, La-hore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Multan. –Agencies