New Delhi: Technology will be at the forefront of efforts by India’s ministry of rporate affairs, or MCA, to detect rporate frauds, said an official at the ministry.

The ministry, acrding to this person who did not want to be identified, will mine its database of reports filed electronically by mpanies and their auditors, follow up on public mplaints, media reports, and information from whistleblowers to detect rporate frauds early.

MCA has been at the forefront of recent investigations into Satyam puter Services Ltd, whose founder admitted in January to having fudged the mpany’s acunts over the years to the tune of at least Rs7,136 crore. Even as these investigations ntinue, the mpany’s ownership has changed hands in a deal facilitated by the ernment, and it is now ntrolled by Tech Mahindra Ltd and goes by the brand name Mahindra Satyam.

Apart from using technology and following up on reports and mplaints, MCA will also try to ordinate better with stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and banking regulator Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said a send MCA official, who, too, did not want to be identified.

All the new measures are part of MCA 21, the ministry’s e-ernance initiative.

“Data mining is a focus area for the next generation MCA 21 programme where we plan to make the best use of technology and data to detect rporate frauds. The National Institute for Smart ernment (NISG) is working on a ncept paper on how to knit technology with the available data so that the ministry gets best information on every mpany registered with it,” said the first MCA official.

To be sure, the quality of the e-filings by mpanies and MCA’s own monitoring of these needs to improve. Pavan Kumar Vijay, managing director of rporate Professionals (India) Pvt. Ltd, a Delhi-based research outfit dealing with rporate analysis, said: “Over 50% mpanies today don’t do e-filing. When MCA sends them notices, most often they are returned undelivered. Perhaps the ministry needs to start an operation to plug this loophole. One such move can be publishing defaulters’ lists in newspapers.”

Based in Hyderabad, NISG works with the Union and state ernments with their e-ernance initiatives.

The first MCA official said NISG would submit the ncept paper on new generation MCA 21 before the end of this fiscal year and that the project would be launched sometime next year.

The send official said the ministry would start using the so-called extensible business reporting language (XBRL) in an effort to work closely with Sebi and RBI, which are also migrating to XBRL.

XBRL is an electronic format for mmunication of business and financial data that is beming popular around the world. India, too, is working on moving on to XBRL.

While MCA maintains a database of all registered mpanies, Sebi deals with listed firms and RBI with banks and non-banking finance mpanies.

“Through e-filing, MCA has obtained a mass database which is available in public domain. So far its use is restricted to getting information on mpanies. But this data can be productively used for examining and analysing the direction in which mpanies are moving. XBRL, mbined with a sophisticated technology, will further support these objectives,” said Ashok Haldea, former secretary, Institute of Chartered Acuntants of India.

The send MCA official said tenders for providing software for MCA 21 would be called for sometime this fiscal year. Currently, the software for MCA 21 is provided by Tata nsultancy Services Ltd.