The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has been investigating the debt-ridden Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) since last October. Now, they are turning to cyber forensics to dig in for more proof of wrongdoing on the part of the senior executives that caused the crisis of the infrastructure and its numerous subsidiaries. Computer forensics is the application of investigation and analysis techniques to gather and preserve evidence from a particular computing device in a way that is suitable for presentation in a court of law.
As reported by The Economic Times, the IL&FS board has already started an investigation and has decided to recruit an expert investigator in the next week. They added that SFIO needs viable information regarding aspects and decisions taken by some executives of IL&FS and its subsidiaries. The final forensic audit report on IL&FS submitted by Grant Thornton recently had found 107 instances of loan evergreening worth Rs 10,264 crore apart from a string of other irregularities.
Two digital forensic investigations will reportedly be conducted and will extensively search through the company servers as well as the desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones of the company officials. Around 25 desktop servers and laptops are already in possession of SFIO and evidence is being collected. The probes are also expected to look into communication between senior executives on social media platforms, looking for any patterns that could be of help with the case.
Significantly, independent directors of various IL&FS companies, auditors, credit rating agencies and former officials are watched closely by the corporate affairs ministry for alleged lapses in carrying out their duties as financial problems continued to brew at the diversified group.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure financing giant has reportedly shut 45 of its group firms that were allegedly used to round-trip loans and funds, of which 42 were registered overseas. There were 347 companies in total [previously]. The number has come down to 302. The rest of the firms have been closed down, a source told Mint, explaining that these were shell companies used for round-tripping loans and funds.
The Group has a debt of Rs 99,358 crore as of last September and is also seeing a lot of layoffs. The buzz is that IL&FS’ permanent staff has come down from 5,000 to 2,500 while the contractual staff has shrunk over 11% to 8,000 currently.
