Black money: Lack of inputs hurdle for top eco intel agency

New Delhi, Sep 2: A year after it was mandated to create a database of financial crimes and issue alerts to enforcement agencies about black money, the country's top economic intelligence organisation CEIB is groping in the dark for want of good snoop information.

Top sources in the Finance Ministry said the CEIB, in the last six months, has sent a number of reminders to agencies like the I-T department, ED, IB, CBI, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence and others to share with it the "gist/summary" of cases they are developing and probing so that it can prepare a "good and enhanced repository" to combat such crimes.

"The various agencies are still not sending the summary of the economic crime cases they investigate or prosecute. The CEIB has made many requests for such information but barring few instances, not much is shared," a source said.

Last year, the government had decided to revamp and review the role and functioning of the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB).

A high-level committee constituted in this regard had recommended that all snoop and enforcement agencies under the Finance and Home ministries "will share information with the CEIB, which in turn, will be able to provide back-end support, linkages and insights harnessing the power of databases and data analytics to the agencies, and a holistic view of these activities to the Government".

The CEIB, according to sources, is hence unable to accomplish the task of creating a library of financial crime cases and is also not able to issue large-scale advisories related to economic frauds and scams.

PTI