No search and seizure power for Serious Frauds Office

NEW DELHI: The Union cabinet has spelt out the outlines of the Serious Frauds Office promised by the finance minister as a major deterrent to corporate crime. However, it will neither have the power to prosecute nor even of search and seizure.
Nor can it initiate investigations on its own, the Department of Company Affairs (DCA) will tell it what to do. The Office, to be set up as cell within the DCA under the charge of a joint secretary or an additional secretary, is expected to be operational by the end of the current fiscal. It would not be a statutory entity at this stage.
The cell would have about a dozen experts on its panel and will operate from Delhi and Mumbai. Experts would be drawn from various backgrounds including forensic science, IT, accounting, financial markets, taxation and law. The full strength of the cell, with the support staff, would be about 50.
The SFIO will take up investigations that are characterised by complexity and having inter-departmental and inter-disciplinary ramifications, substantial involvement of public interest in terms of monetary misappropriation or in terms of number of person affected and possibility of the investigations leading to or contributing towards a clear improvement in systems, laws or procedures.
Investigation teams would be led by officers of the rank of director or deputy secretary, and the government proposes to have four investigating team. Each team would be entrusted with about two cases in a year. Wherever necessary, part of the investigations would be outsourced to professional agencies.
The Cabinet has also cleared the proposal to set up two committees of secretaries — an empowered committee chaired by the Cabinet secretary and another committee chaired by the DCA secretary — to ensure co-ordination between various wings of the government and to facilitate removal obstacles to investigation. The empowered committee would be entrusted with giving directions to the SFIO.