The government has notified fresh recruitment norms for various positions at the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) as it continues its efforts to strengthen manpower at the probe agency.

The recruitment rules, which have been in the works for quite sometime, would come as a boost for the white collar crime investigation agency which has been grappling with staff shortage.

The Corporate Affairs Ministry has notified recruitment rules for various positions at SFIO, including that for assistant directors and deputy directors.

Recruitment rules are now in place for the post of assistant directors in the areas of investigation, law, banking and corporate law, among other posts, according to a recent notification.

SFIO comes under the Corporate Affairs Ministry.

In December last, the Ministry had informed the Lok Sabha that it was in the process of notifying 20 recruitment rules for various posts at SFIO.

As many as 57 posts were vacant out of the 130 sanctioned positions at the agency during the start of 2015.

Concerned over inadequate capacity building at SFIO, a Parliamentary panel, in December last year, had pulled up the Ministry for failing to finalise the recruitment rules for the probe agency.

In its report tabled in Parliament on December 3, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance said it was constrained to observe that capacity building has not materialised at SFIO.

Meanwhile, the agency has been looking to hire people, including experts, to help in probe and related works.

Recently, the agency empanelled 91 chartered accountant firms to carry out forensic audit and analysis of financial statements on a case to case basis.

The Corporate Affairs Ministry has ordered SFIO probe for alleged fraud against 196 companies in nearly three years, with 42 of them coming under the scanner in this fiscal.

SFIO was asked to probe the affairs of 83 companies in 2013-14 and the number stood at 71 in 2014-15.

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