Audit could not raid DRI
DRI is the Super Sleuth Agency of the Customs and once upon a time only exceptionally talented officers with impeccable integrity were posted in the agency, but time took its toll …..
CAG in its latest report to Parliament, Report No.8 of 2015 - Union Government (Indirect Taxes - Customs), says, "The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) was constituted on 4 December 1957 and exercises all the powers specified in Section 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107 and 110 of the Customs Act, 1962. DRI has established an intelligence gathering network which relies on traditional human intelligence resources as well as contemporary technical gathering tools. DRI collects, analyses and disseminates intelligence to the field formations, help in investigation and keeps statistics of seizures and prices/rates etc, for watching trends of smuggling, movement of other contraband and suggest remedies for fixing loopholes in existing laws and procedures."
After all this is the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence - they have intelligence enough to deal with Audit. The CAG Audit report wryly remarks, " The records relating to rewards to the informers, cases under investigation and the database of the organization known as ISS (Intelligence Support System) were not produced to audit though the audit intervention was at the level of Director General of Audit. "
Intelligence will not submit to Audit.
However CAG's Audit managed to come to certain conclusions:
1. DRI does not have any IS Strategic plan for Database Management system. The data maintained manually is not internally audited or monitored.
2. It was also observed that there was no HR (Human Resources) management policy for recruitment, capacity building, skill upgradation of manpower required to strategically manage and monitor a critical intelligence system.
3. There is a risk of undetected non compliance of a multi location, multi user critical application like ISS/ DRIPS handling sensitive intelligence data, in an IS organization.
So, Audit recommended:
a. Independent third party evaluation/assessment.
b. Appointing/Posting the right skilled persons.
c. Creation of an appropriate IS organization within DRI.
d. Building internal walls inside the IS network.
e. Audit of the database, change management, operating system.
Audit observed, "No Internal control mechanism is in place to get assurance about the effective fulfillment of the tasks/mandate as evident from the cases taken up by DRI. Relied upon documents (RUD) were not provided in the first instance in some cases which could reduce the opportunity given to the parties to respond.
The Statutory audit conducted was closely monitored at the level of Director General of Audit (Central Receipts), Delhi. DRI did not co-operate with audit in terms of sharing the processes and information required to form adequate assurance of its systems and performance ."