CID Registers Cases on Huge GST- Commercial Tax Irregularities

Hyderabad: Days after the state government issued orders, the Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) registered cases against former chief secretary Somesh Kumar and others v-a-vis the Rs 1,400 crore irregularities in the Commercial Tax department.

Sources confirmed on Wednesday that the CID re-registered the case and formed a team of officials to investigate the fraud. A DSP-rank officer is made the Investigation officer while an SP-rank officer would monitor the case and the status of investigation.

The GST fraud related to the case of Big Leap Technologies and Solutions Pvt Ltd. The entity is registered for manpower supplies and has passed on Input Tax credit worth `25.51 crore without actually paying any tax to the government.

This resulted in a loss of Rs 25.51 crore to the state exchequer. In this connection, IIT-Hyderabad was engaged as a service provider for development of software by the state commercial taxes department.

The role of the service provider was to perform analytics and provide various kinds of discrepancy reports based on the returns filed by the taxpayers registered in Telangana.

The discrepancy figured in the desk audit of Big Leap Technologies and Solutions was a basic discrepancy. However, the same did not appear in the reports generated through the "Scrutiny Module" developed by IIT-Hyderabad.

As per instructions from then special chief secretary, Somesh Kumar, they have also stated that they have given a format to IIT-Hyderabad for capturing all four discrepancies such as IGST, CGST, SGST and Cess and they were not aware as to why IGST and Cess notices were not generated.

In investigations, it was revealed that the project investigator, Prof. Sobhan Babu took instructions through a WhatsApp group, "Special Initiatives" with then chief secretary, Somesh Kumar, S.V. Kasi Visweswara Rao, additional commissioner (ST) and A Siva Rama Prasad, deputy commissioner and professor Sobhan Babu as its members.

Hence, an urgent memo was issued to Visweswara Rao, and Siva Rama Prasad directing them to explain on the composition of the WhatsApp group and the changes made to the software based on the directions issued in the group.

On a perusal of the WhatsApp chat history, it was noticed that certain reports were generated by estimating IGST Loss and instructions were issued not to cancel registrations even in fraud cases.

Earlier, the Hyderabad central crime station registered a case and the government transferred the case to CID for further investigation.