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.
“Although investigation work per se will not be handed over to private detective agencies, the SFIO can hire them for purposes like tracking missing directors, vanishing companies, etc,” a senior official told PTI.
Set up in 2003, the SFIO, an investigating body that is yet to get statutory and legal powers, came into the limelight for its role in probing the Rs 14,000-crore Satyam fraud case.
Source – PTI
The decision permitting 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 is a most dangerous one, given the Radiia effect and its aftermath. Instead, it would have been better and absolute safer to depute good and honest but capable investigators from the income tax department–based fundamentally on the track record of integrity subject to a reality check of the growth of theie assets sine joining the service–and entrust them with the responsibility. They must be given the proper “rank” too, a precondition in this type of jobs ans a fairly longer stint in the SFIO, even permanent absorption with an option. In addition, such investigative agencies must be freed from the clutches of the rank generalist jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none IAS and the CSS, the latter having a permanent lien in Delhi while enjoying the power to frame the rules of transfer/posting and effect transfers for money in the Central Services deemed and treated as inferior and subordinate in rank and status to not only the IAS but even the independent empires of the Railway and Post and Telecommunications Services as well as and more so the CSS/Central Stenographers’ Service and the Railway Board Sectt. Service, apart from an Inspector of Police (in matters of protocol and precedence).The Prime and Home Ministers being diabolically against the IRS (Income Tax) will no doubt object, ably supported by the CAbSec and the entire IAS and the Railway Board.