The Department of Revenue Investigation filed cases against the owners of nine firms at High Court, Patan on Thursday and Friday for dodging taxes by using the fake value added tax bills of nearly Rs3 billion.

The department said in two separate statements that it filed cases against owners of the four enterprises promoted by a single person in collaboration of different groups on Thursday for evading tax amounting to Rs2.17 billion. According to the department, it is one of the largest fake VAT bill cases involving a single person.

Likewise, the department on Friday filed the cases against the owners of five enterprises for dodging tax amounting to Rs560.94 million.

On Thursday, cases were filed against the promoters of ONS Enterprises, Renu Trade Enterprises, Rupam Trade Concern and Arju International, all promoted by a group represented by Kishori Yadav for selling goods that they hadn’t procured using the fake VAT bills. Whatever goods that they had imported, were not sold, according to the department.

Yadav, a resident of Kalyanpur Municipality-11, Siraha has been staying in Imadol, Lalitpur.

Yadav is a director of the firm ONS Enterprises while Pramila Devi Yadav is the proprietor. The bank account is, however, in the name of Bishal Agrawal. They have been charged of dodging tax amounting to Rs766.78 million.

Yadav is also the director of Renu Enterprises whose proprietor is Renu Kumari. Binaya Lihala Agrawal, another person is also involved in this firm, according to the department. All three have been charged of evading tax amounting to Rs506 million by selling the goods that the firm had not purchased by using the fake VAT bills .

Kishori Yadav along with Agrawal are also involved in Rupam Trade Concern while Umesh Kumar Singh is their partner. All three face charges of dodging tax of Rs491.86 billion by the firm.

Similarly, Murti Devi Singh is the proprietor of Arju International and Yadav and Agrawal are also involved with the firm. All three of them face charges of evading tax of Rs408.79 million. The total amount of tax evasion was determined combining both income tax and value added tax evasion by using fake VAT bills.

“Kishori Yadav is the main designer of these firms,” said Ram Prasad Acharya, director general of the department. “These firms have been found to have sold the goods using fake VAT bills but not those that they had purchased authentically.”

On Friday, the cases were filed against the promoters and operators of bank accounts of the firms—Om Sriram Enterprises, Nepal Trade Concern, the Vision Enterprises, Guru Ganesh Import and Export and NIC Traders.

Birendra Ram Chamar Hajara, proprietor of Om Sriram Enterprises; Mahesh Hajara, proprietor of Nepal Trade Concern; Durgesh Kumar Jha, proprietor of the Vision Enterprises and its bank account operator—Nasib Kumar Jha; Suresh Sahani Mahala, proprietor of Guru Ganesh Import and Export and its bank account operator—Ram Prasad Mahato; and Bhupendra Karki, proprietor of NIC Traders and its bank account operator—Gopal Prasad Bhattarai face tax evasion charges.

The department had started the investigation into the fake VAT bill scandal in early 2019 after a number of firms were found to be involved in doging tax by using such bills.

According to Acharya, over 200 firms have been found to have sold fake VAT bills worth around Rs27 billion in the last fiscal year 2019-20 and this fiscal year.

“We have filed cases against most of the firms that had sold such bills,” he said. “We are now focussing investigation on those who had procured such bills and used them to evade taxes.”

According to him, the department has been investigating around 1,500 firms that had procured such bills. Similar investigation launched in 2010 had exposed the use of fake VAT bills by a number of firms promoted by reputed businessmen.