Ministry of Corporate Affairs has asked corporate fraud investigating agency SFIO to outsource part of its work to private sleuths to overcome the problem of staff shortage that was causing delay in completing probes timely. The Ministry, in an internal note to the Serious Fraud Investigating Office (SFIO), has directed the body to hire private detective agencies to share the work load for significant cases.
The Finance Ministry is likely to set up Directorate of Criminal Investigation, a specialised wing to probe cases of black money, money laundering and terror funding, by the end of this month. A dedicated unit called Directorate of Criminal Investigation will look into the nexus between black money (which is illegally acquired), money laundering, and in extreme cases, terror funding. The Directorate would be notified within this month, a Finance Ministry official told PTI.
The government may consider bringing in a legislation to make anti-glare technology in automobiles mandatory in an effort to reduce night accidents caused due to blinding by lights of oncoming vehicles. The government has been supporting the development of an automotive anti-glare technology by the International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT), which is has reached demonstration stage.
There are more foreigners than Indians receiving patents in India, prompting the government to say much needs to be done to encourage more domestic innovations. The number of patents granted to Indian applicants has steadily decreased from a high of 41 per cent in 2002-03 to a low of 17 per cent in 2009-10, according to an Industry Ministry document.
Over Rs 2,000 crore was lost by the country”s banking sector in frauds during 2009-10 with more than 200 of these incidents involving deception of above one crore each, CBI Director A P Singh has said. The CBI chief has warned the banks of latest trends emerging in banking frauds in areas like electronic payments, technology-related payments like RTGS, credit cards, ATM, cell banking, internet banking among others.
Retirement fund body EPFO will not take into account the past performance of previously engaged ICICI Pru, HSBC AMC, SBI and Reliance Capital while finalising the new asset management companies (AMCs) for managing its Rs 3 lakh crore corpus. Since the returns on investment provided by four fund managers was above the bench mark level of 8.52 per cent, past performance as EPFO’s fund manager would not be given any weightage while making fresh appointments, a source privy to the development told PTI.
Annual Confidential Reports of government officials are not personal information and they should be provided to the public under the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission has held.The case relates to RTI applicant V R Sharma who had sought detail of ACRs of about 17 officials including his own, but the Labour Ministry allowed him access to only his ACR.
The Government today said financial reporting in the new technology format XBRL will enable regulators to keep a better vigilance over activities of companies. Speaking at an ICSI seminar on eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), the Corporate Affairs Secretary, Mr D.K. Mittal, said: We the regulators need to know what is happening and an environment has to be created where every information is available and XBRL is a solution to this’
A bank cannot be compelled to provide loan under any law or procedure to a consumer and the latter cannot demand compensation for expenses incurred in applying for the process, the Delhi State Consumer Forum has ruled. Under no law and procedure, a bank can be compelled to give loan, and that is what the complainant wants. If in the process of furnishing documents, some expenses have been incurred by him, as argued, he can not be entitled to the compensation, Justice Barkat Ali Zaidi said.
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is considering allowing companies to allocate the unused quota in public offers exclusively to retail investors. The move is expected to further increase retail participation in government offers where the employee quota is usually undersubscribed while retail is oversold because of good pricing. “A proposal is under examination,” a SEBI official told ET.
