ED to have zonal office in Odisha soon: Director

Reported by Santosh Jagdev

Bhubaneswar, Jan 23:

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) will soon havea zonal office in Odisha to deal with cases of money laundering in the state, Director Dr Rajan S Katoch revealed here today.

“We are looking to open a zonal office. An advertisement for recrutiment of a Joint Director (JD) has already been published in newspapers. Candidates will be shortlisted for the post after scrutiny of the applications,” Dr Katoch said.

When asked about expansion of ED activities in the days to come by media persons, Dr Katoch said, “Expansion in itself is a challenge for the department. There are a lot of important cases in the country to deal with. But we are short of manpower to deal with the large number of cases. Now we have only one-third of the sanctioned manpower. To deal with cases like offences of money laundering in a clear, free and fair and transparent manner and to take such cases to their logical conclusion, we require to be at optimum strength to do justice to the cases. It would take 2-3 years to fulfill all the vacant posts,” the ED Director said.

The director said recently his department have inaugurated cyber forensic laboratory in its headquarter office in New Delhi recently. The technology can recover data from electronic chips and gadgets, he added.

“We are making continuous efforts to improve our manpower and technology in the state as well as in the country at large to deal with all cases effectively,” he added.

All joint directors had been asked to expedite investigation in important cases of money laundering, Katoch said.