The ministry has modified an order of June 2006 to facilitate this information sharing, under section 66 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). This law allows designated authorities under PMLA to share information with other authorities under other laws, in public interest, to perform their functions. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) enjoy concurrent powers under PMLA.

The latest order from the finance ministry published on Friday names GSTN as the 26th entry in a list of entities with which PMLA authorities share information in public interest.

The move comes at a time when central and state GST authorities are on a drive against fake GST registrations aimed at preventing wrongful use of tax credits and tax evasion.

As part of this latest drive, the authorities have detected tax evasion of about ₹13,900 crore and have also blocked wrongfully taken input tax credit of ₹1,430 crore.

The government has been expanding the scope of information sharing among various regulatory and investigating agencies in order to prevent financial irregularities including tax evasion and money laundering. These agencies now extensively use technology and data from various sources to identify risky entities that warrant a closer look. These efforts have aided in stepping up GST collections to a historic ₹1.87 trillion in April.