ICAI to conduct one-day workshop for economic offences wing cops

The Vadodara branch of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has organised a day-long workshop to train the cops of the economic offences wing (EOW) of police in methods to handle economic offences.

The workshop will be organised at Hotel Surya Palace in Vadodara on Saturday.

The subjects to be covered in the workshop include white collar crimes, newer methods of fraud detection, frauds in banks and financial institutions, financial crimes using computers and the internet, frauds through forgery and fake documents, forensic tests and frauds in the co-operative banking sector.

As many as 70 police officials, at present posted in the department to handle economic offences, will attend the workshop.

Most of these cops will be from the Ahmedabad, Kheda, Vadodara and Surat ranges of the state police.

Experts from Delhi and Mumbai have been called by the Vadodara branch of ICAI to make presentations on the newer methods being adopted in economic crimes and how the police must track down these.

Sanjeev Shah, chairman of the Vadodara branch of the ICAI, said with the number of economic offences rising everyday, the need was felt for training police officials in handling such cases.

"We have interacted with top police officials and although the senior officials are equipped to handle such cases, it is the police inspectors and sub inspectors who do the most crucial part of the investigation," Shah said.

Shah said while most lower-level investigating officials are graduates, they have little or no training in handling economic offences.

"IPS officials enter the investigation at a much later stage, by then the evidence collection is already complete and this affects the outcome of the case to a large extent," the chairman said.

Shah lamented that there is no mechanism to train policemen, especially those involved in handling economic offences, in the latest developments in handling such cases.

"With the overall growth in the economy, the number of cases of frauds and other economic offences has also increased manifold," Shah said.

Though the number of economic offences is very high, the number of convictions is dismally low.

"If our police investigating such cases were better equipped to handle such offences, things might have been much different," Shah said.

Special IGP, Vadodara range, Rakesh Asthana, who has co-ordinated with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India to hold the workshop, will inaugurate the event, a statement said.