Serious Frauds Office has probed 17 firms this fiscal: Jaitley

New Delhi, Dec 2 (IANS) The government’s Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) for corporate frauds has probed 17 companies till date during the current fiscal, Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley said Tuesday.

The SFIO investigated 20 companies in 2011-12 and 22 firms each in 2012-13 and 2013-14 for alleged corporate frauds, Jaitley told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

With this, a total of 81 companies have been probed by the SFIO since 2011-12.

“Government has taken a number of measures to curb and prevent corporate frauds, including making ‘Fraud’ a substantive offence in the Companies Act, granting statutory status to the SFIO, stricter norms of corporate governance and their implementation, increasing application of technology for early detection of frauds and surveillance and usage of forensic tools,” a corporate affairs ministry statement said here.