Ahmedabad: The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted multi-city searches in Gujarat in connection with a money laundering case linked to an alleged GST fraud in which eight people, including a journalist, were arrested recently by the state police, official sources said.
About 23 premises in Rajkot, Junagadh, Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar and Veraval were raided by the federal agency after a case was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said. Premises linked to arrested journalist Mahesh Langa, who works with The Hindu newspaper, were also being covered.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also looking at the role of a number of other entities in this alleged GST evasion case as it probes the allegations of a wider conspiracy and generation of purported proceeds of crime, the sources said.
The money laundering case stems from an FIR registered by the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch against several persons and entities after it received a complaint from the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) against an accused company, Dhruvi Enterprise, in a case of "bogus" claim of input tax credit under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and alleged issuance of fake invoices without supply of goods between February 1 and May 1, 2023.
The police have arrested Mahesh Langa and seven others in connection with the case. The Hindu quoted Mahesh Langa's counsel Vedanta Rajguru as claiming that the journalist is neither a director nor promoter of a company under scanner in this case, DA Enterprise, which has also been named in the FIR.
In the remand application for Mahesh Langa and others, police claimed he was running DA Enterprise in the names of his relative and wife. The company in question is owned by Manoj Langa, a relative of Mahesh Langa, and the latter's wife is a silent partner with no rights to undertake any transaction or access to bank accounts, The Hindu quoted the counsel as saying.
"The police case hinges on a statement made by Manoj Langa that he carried out the transactions on the instructions of Mahesh Langa. There is no transaction or signature in Mahesh's name," the lawyer said. After registering the FIR, the Crime Branch and Gujarat's Economic Offences Wing raided 14 locations across the state.
According to the Crime Branch, more than 200 fraudulently created firms worked across the country in an "organised manner" to "defraud" the government exchequer by availing bogus input tax credits and forged documents and identities were used to create these firms for tax evasion.
