National

Notification issued for SFIO

By Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI APRIL 23. The Government has issued a notification for the formal establishment of a Serious Frauds Investigation Office (SFIO) which will work as a nodal agency to look into corporate, stock, bank and tax frauds and related economic offences.

It will be headed by O.P. Arya, a 1975 batch IAS officer belonging to the Uttaranchal cadre. His appointment as Director has been cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), sources said.

The multi-disciplinary SFIO will consist of senior officers drawn from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Income Tax Department, the Reserve Bank of India, nationalised banks and the Company Law Board and chartered accountants.

Though it would not have any police powers of prosecution, the SFIO would take up cases suo motu and refer them for investigations to the department concerned such as the Income Tax or the Economic Offences Wing of the Central Bureau of Investigation. The specialised EOW of the CBI was set up in 1995 in the post-Harshad Mehta securities scam that had surfaced during the Narasimha Rao regime.

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