Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Mar 2: The Narcotics Control Bureau has chosen to recruit financial data analysts and forensic audit firms to assist it in investigating complicated drug offences that entail the use of the dark web, cryptocurrencies, and multi-layered transactions.
Last year, NCB Director SN Pradhan mandated that the agency’s sleuths focus solely on cases with inter-state and international consequences, as well as those involving difficult investigations and high-profile cartels and syndicates.
He directed his investigative wings to follow up on this by conducting a thorough fund trail investigation and timely filing of charge sheets with the appropriate courts.
The order came as the agency was attempting to emerge from the shadow of a controversy surrounding its investigation into some cases at its Mumbai zonal office, including the drugs-on-cruise raids of October last year, which resulted in the arrest of 20 people, including actor Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
The NCB has issued a notice of empanelment seeking consultancy firms to assist it in “uncovering the chain of transactions for drug money and providing appropriate guidance in financial investigative concerns.” According to the proposal obtained by PTI, they will also assist the NCB in analysing financial statements and data stored in the bureau’s and other agencies’ databases.
It will also assist investigators in “preparing income and spending statements of the interested party and linked parties in order to unearth the ill-gotten money.”
The experts are also expected to assist NCB teams in conducting forensic audits, scrutinising reports and documents, and analysing bank statements and property transactions in order to uncover an accused’s illegal income, associates, and family members.
Experts will be needed to analyse financial data and generate firm and sector-specific reports, among other things.
Initial plans call for financial expertise to be assigned to the company’s zonal offices in Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Bengaluru, and Guwahati. The use of the dark web, cryptocurrencies, and different payment gateways and channels for narcotics transactions is becoming more common, according to the NCB.
As a result, a “specialised and not generalised” competence is necessary to investigate these cases, according to a senior officer, who also stated that the agency is now vigorously performing “cyber patrols” to combat these crimes.
“We are also going to have a fully equipped cyber wing soon. This financial probe wing, drawn from empanelled private experts, would assist the agency to enhance its investigation quality,” he said.
The NCB arrested 22 people last month, including software engineers, a financial analyst, an MBA graduate, and one of their own employees, as part of a pan-India drug trafficking network that uses the “dark web” and bitcoin to send narcotics home.
