The Sunday Guardian: New Delhi: Sunday, July 09, 2017.
The report
was based on an RTI application that I had filed with the FIU seeking the
following details.
1. The
details of cases of money laundering that have been discovered since January 1,
2006. 2. The details of cases of money laundering that the Financial
Intelligence Unit (FIU) has registered since January 1, 2016. 3. The details of
the total allotted staff strength to FIU. 4. The details of the present staff
strength of FIU. In its response, the FIU stated that its sanctioned strength
is 75, while the present strength is 37. It also said that out of these 37, 15
were hired as consultant on contract. (Check image for RTI reply). As per their
reply, I also mentioned in my story that it is exempted from sharing certain
information under the RTI Act.
From the
RTI reply, it is clear that:
1. The FIU
was functioning at half its strength. 2. A major chunk of the staff (17)
employed at the FIU, which handles sensitive documents and matters concerning
national security, are not government servants, but recruited as contractual
employees. 3. My sources in the Finance Ministry had said that the FIU was not
able to function as it should because of the staff shortage and it was also
being forced to employ contractual employees to deal with the shortage. I would
like to state that I did the report with the best of intentions, which was to
point out the fact that FIU’s work was being hampered due to staff shortage,
which was backed by the data given by the FIU itself. The report is not false
or malicious, as the notice given by the FIU indicates.
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