Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday exhorted officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) to maintain its good track record of professionalism and resist the temptation of “making a song and dance” of an investigation by rushing to the media.
“The DRI has to endeavour to become a near perfect organisation,” Mr. Jaitley said while speaking at the 61st foundation day of the DRI.
“In order to ensure that we achieve that utmost level of perfection, there are a few cardinal principals we have to remember. We have to remember that investigative agencies have to maintain the utmost levels of professionalism, they have to be guided only by one sole purpose: detection of crime. They have to also make sure no innocent is harmed or harassed and at the same time ensure no guilty gets away.”
“They have to resist the temptation of making a lot of song and dance when the initial investigations start and rushing to the media,” Mr. Jaitley added. “It has to be faceless. The lesser it is in the media controversy or news, the better it is for it. No news is good news as far as investigative agencies are concerned.”
The Finance Minister lauded the DRI for two important investigative successes it achieved last year.
“One is a rich seizure of arms and ammunition against the insurgents at the border, a place where normally Intelligence agents of revenue would normally have little role to play,” Mr. Jaitley said. “And the other a huge detection of almost ₹4,000 crore of evasion in the form of trade-based money laundering in relation to the diamond trade.”
Mr. Jaitley also pointed out that the Revenue Intelligence officers still had the challenge of curbing illegal gold imports, as well as narcotics smuggling.
“India and Indians have a strange attraction to gold,” he said. “We are probably one of the two largest consumers of gold in the world. And even though the facility of importing gold through the normal channels is available, the tendency to bring it through illegal routes is still very high. And for all investigative agencies, checking gold smuggling remains a great challenge.”
“We are also geographically in an area that is adversely impacted by the narcotics smuggling and that remains a challenge,” he added.
