Consultant poses as CA , siphons Rs 8 crore service tax
A tax consultant who posed as a chartered accountant (CA) and siphoned Rs 8 crore of clients under the pretext of paying service taxes of businessman and firms, was arrested by Mumbai Police.
The general cheating branch of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Friday arrested Kalpesh Shamji Shah (45), a resident of Ghatkopar. Shah was booked under IPC sections for cheating, forgery, breach of trust and under the Information Technology Act. He was remanded to police custody till Thursday.
Service tax department officials and clients were shocked when it transpired that he was only a tax consultant and was using another CA’s degree and registration number, said investigating officer Jahangir Sayyed.
Officials said Shah was since 2012 defrauding taxpayers and the service tax department.
Recently, superintendent of service tax Mahendra Mogre, while studying the service tax of businessman Prakash Pawar, found something amiss and immediately started a probe. Pawar had paid a Rs 26 lakh to his CA, Shah, to be paid as service tax, but the latter paid only Rs 4.7 lakh; Rs 21.3 lakh was transferred to Shah’s account. They also found a bogus service tax challan issued by Shah.
“An inquiry showed he had cheated 50 clients similarly, involving around Rs 8 crore,’’ said joint commissioner of police (EOW) Niket Kaushik.
If a client had to pay a service tax of Rs 10 lakh, Shah would take money into his accounts and pay Rs 1-2 lakh; the rest would be transferred to his own account and he would forge the figure on receipts of the service tax department and hand it over to clients.
Police said recently the department started online automation, where a receipt is automatically received by PDF. Shah ensured the PDF file of payment was received on his office computer, where he would download it, convert into a Word file, manipulate figures on receipts and send it to clients.
Police said he took Rs 8.5 crore from 50 clients, but paid Rs 1.1 crore online and the remaining Rs 7.4 crore went into his own account.
Shah was using another CA’s registration number issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, New Delhi. Police recorded the statement of the actual Kalpesh Mahendra Shah, who had got his degree in 2002, and since then was working in the private sector.
Police said that on learning that he will be arrested, he moved the sessions court and later Bombay high court for anticipatory bail, which was rejected.
