Recording their statement Tuesday at the Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI), which is investigating the case, the pump operators said they had relied on their accountants to clear tax, and their staff, while cheating the state, had deceived them as well.
"They admitted the fault on their part and even deposited collateral equivalent to the amount of revenue they evaded," said Mahesh Dahal, director general of the DRI.
Proprietors of Jaya Shree Chandra Oil, Makalu Oil and Rajesh Trade Concern recorded the statement on Tuesday. The owner of the fourth wrongdoing pump is scheduled to record his statement on Thursday.
Apart from these four cases, the department has also received 40 possible fake vouchers from Inland Revenue Department (IRD) for investigation. The department is presently investigating the case at the taxpayers´ level.
Once through, it will start investigation on how they obtained bank seal and signed vouchers that could be manipulated and how they were able to penetrate into the data system of IRD system.
DRI officials informed myrepublica.com that they doubt loopholes existing both in the bank that handles revenue vouchers and also in the system of revenue administration.
If there were no faults on the part of the bank, the tax evaders would not have accessed vouchers which, despite the bank´s seal and signatures, could be manipulated, said Dahal. Likewise, in the absence of weakness on the part of revenue system, those would simply not have made way into the data system of IRD.
Tax offices in Kathmandu had suddenly started to encounter the use of fake vouchers from earlier this month.
IRD estimates that the volume of tax evasion through this practice so far stands merely at about Rs 1.70 million, but it cautions it could just be start of a dangerous trend that could hit revenue administration severely.
Nightmare for the IRD is that, some wrongdoers had entered fake vouchers using its employees´ password-protected usernames even while they were not present in the office.
"Problem exists either at staff level or with the system. We will dig out the fact soon," said an IRD source.
Ministry of Finance, meanwhile, has instructed both its departments to take stringent actions against culprits resorting to fake vouchers to evade taxes.
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