SFIO probed 17 firms for corporate frauds this fiscal: Jaitley

As many as 17 firms have been probed by the government's investigation arm SFIO for corporate frauds in the current fiscal so far.
With this, a total of 81 companies have been probed for corporate frauds by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) since 2011-12.
SFIO investigated 20 companies in 2011-12 and 22 firms each in 2012-13 and 2013-14 for alleged corporate frauds, Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today.
The government "has taken a number of measures to curb and prevent corporate frauds" like making fraud a substantive offence and providing statutory status to SFIO, under the new companies law, the minister said.

Stricter norms of corporate governance under the Companies Act 2013 as well as increasing application of technology for early detection of frauds through data analysis surveillance and usage of forensic tool are among the other steps taken by the government to prevent fraud by companies, Jaitley said.
To a separate query related to the Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), the minister said that the institute had been allocated Rs 110 crore in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), while it had been given Rs 211 crore under the 11th year plan.

Further, Jaitley said "since its establishment as a society in September, 2008, the institute has taken many steps to fulfil its mandate".

"The institute has emerged as an important institute for conducting various courses, seminars, workshops etc on issues of relevance to the corporate sector such as corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, role of company directors, independent directors, competition issues etc," the minister said, among other things.
"Officials and other stakeholders, both in private as well as public sector, banks investors etc have benefited from these programmes," he added.
The minister also said that IICA had signed 4 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with foreign institutions like George Washington University Law school USA. It has also entered into 27 MoUs with reputed domestic institutions.

"The MoUs are meant to furthering the aims and objectives of the IICA to achieve its role as holistic think-tank, capacity building, service delivery and training institute by deriving advantages of synergies from partner institutions," Jaitley said.
IICA had been established as think-tank, action research, capacity building institute to serve as a platform for value-adding partnerships between the government, the corporate entities and other stakeholders.