CVC for mechanism to check corruption in private sector

There is a need to build an internal audit system, says CVC Commissioner

Citing instances of corruption in the private sector, Central Vigilance Commissioner K V Chowdary today suggested evolving of a mechanism to red-flag wrong doings and prevent them.

Addressing an event here, he said there is a need to build an internal audit system which gives out an alert when a wrong doing happens in a private organisation.

"The best thing is to go for prevention," he said, noting that the system should ensure minimum possibility of corruption and even assuming that there are leaks, the leaks should get detected at the earliest or there are alarms.

"There are alarms or alerts that come to you either before the commissioning of an offence or as the offence gets committed or at least immediately or shortly thereafter," Chowdary said.

He said a difficulty in the private section is that after detection of a corrupt practice how to deal with it.

"The government at the Centre if it is a serious criminal sort of offence gets the matter investigated either by state police or a central bureau or by some other body. Then there is prosecution," he said.

But in the private sector, the system to deal with corruption is not so effective, the CVC said, addressing a roundtable discussion with chief vigilance officers of public sector and compliance officers from private sector organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Chowdary cited certain instances of corruption in the

private sector.

He said in the private sector there are constraints of resources and budgets. "So in my view the best or the only way is to build a very strong system which makes it difficult for people to indulge in any kind of corrupt activity," he said.

The CVC said a key issue is identification of the areas and potential for risk. "After assessment of risk, its probability of occurring is what we need to assess. The third one is mitigation. How do we mitigate it and then how do we bring awareness? This is where majority of issues lie," he said.

To a question on the fear of 'three Cs' -- Comptroller and Auditor General, Central Bureau of Investigation and Central Vigilance Commission, he said there is a lot of misinformation on these so called three Cs.

"A bonafide decision taken in the interest of the company is going to be seen or will be seen suspiciously. I would not say that. I am not saying that things like that have not happened.

"But the number of people who got into a difficult situation for taking right decision is probably far fewer than the number of people who failed to take or who took wrong decisions," Chowdary said.