The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Ministry of Finance, whose objective is to provide financial intelligence to other agencies to stop money laundering, terrorism financing and other economic offences, has refused to share the details of the cases of money laundering that it has discovered and acted on since January 2016.
The FIU is tasked with collection, analysing and dissemination of information related to financial transactions that are suspected to be black money or proceeds of crime. The FIU had become a major tool for the government to keep a tab on black money transactions after last year’s 8 November demonetisation.
Officials with the Finance Ministry said that the FIU was suffering from a massive staff crunch, due to which it was unable to show results or achieve the purpose for which it was created.
“It is not that they are not working, but they have not been able to justify their presence completely because of reasons unknown. They were created in 2004 with a specific objective to discover and curb black money transactions. However, how much they have been successful in it, especially after demonetisation, is unclear,” an official said.
“The FIU is working with less than 50% staff. Of the 75 sanctioned staff, only 37 are available as of now. The FIU has been forced to outsource some of its work because it does not have enough officials. Some of them have been hired for a short time on contracts. How do you expect the FIU to function in such circumstances? They deal with sensitive information and yet they have no choice but to share these details with outsiders whom they have been forced to engage with because of lack of regular staff,” another official, who is aware of the development said.
The FIU, while replying to an RTI query filed by this newspaper, stated that it “Under Section 24(1) of the RTI Act, 2005, FIU-IND is exempt from the operation of this Act, except for the information pertaining to the allegation of corruption and human rights violation”. The FIU works closely with the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), National Investigation Agency (NIA), Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) and Central Economic Intelligence Bureau (CEIB).