How to Check Economic-Offence Cases on a Company or Director (2026)

ClawScore · Economic Offences

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Economic offences are the white-collar end of the criminal law: cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery, criminal conspiracy, and money laundering. For a lender, an investor or a partner, an economic-offence case against a company or its directors is one of the most serious findings there is, because it goes to honesty and intent, not just to a commercial dispute. Checking it in India means knowing which agencies investigate these matters and where the cases surface. This guide explains what counts as an economic offence, how to look it up, and how to read what you find. Last verified October 2026.

01The short answer

To check economic-offence cases on a company or director, search the person and the company across the criminal case records on eCourts at services.ecourts.gov.in, including the special courts that hear economic offences, and the High Court and Supreme Court portals for bail, quashing and appeals. These matters are investigated by agencies such as the police Economic Offences Wings, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), so the court stage is where a case becomes publicly searchable.

Confirm the company name, CIN and the director's name and DIN first, search the group and the promoters too, and treat a similar-name hit as something to verify.

02What counts as an economic offence

Economic offences are crimes committed for financial gain, usually involving deceit or breach of trust rather than violence. The common ones against companies and directors are:

• Cheating, under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (the old Section 420 IPC), for dishonest inducement.
• Criminal breach of trust, for misusing property entrusted to a person; see criminal breach of trust under the BNS and Section 406 criminal breach of trust.
• Criminal conspiracy, often charged alongside the main offence; see Section 120B criminal conspiracy.
• Forgery and fraud, and money laundering under the PMLA where the proceeds of crime are involved.

These sit inside the criminal system but are distinct enough that they deserve their own check.

03The agencies involved

Economic offences are investigated by specialised agencies before a case reaches court:

• Economic Offences Wings (EOW) of the state police, for cheating and fraud complaints.
• The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, for serious corporate fraud.
• The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), for larger or inter-state matters.
• The Enforcement Directorate (ED), for money laundering under the PMLA, which can attach assets.

Investigation at one of these agencies is itself a signal, and the matter becomes publicly searchable once a complaint, chargesheet or prosecution reaches the courts.

04Where these cases show

Economic-offence matters surface in several places:

Because the investigation stage is not always public, the court records and the bail and quashing petitions are often where you first see the full shape of an economic-offence case.

05Why they are a severe signal

An ordinary commercial dispute is about money; an economic-offence case is about honesty. That difference is why it weighs so heavily:

• it goes to the integrity of the people you would be dealing with, not just the health of the business;
• a PMLA matter can lead to assets being attached, which directly affects recovery; and
• it carries reputational and regulatory consequences that a civil suit does not.

A recovery suit tells you a deal went wrong. An economic-offence case tells you someone may have set out to deceive. For a buyer, those are not the same kind of finding.

06What a clean result actually means

A clean result means no economic-offence case was found in the records you searched, on the date you searched, under the names you used. It does not rule out an investigation not yet public, a matter under a former name or a group entity, a case in a court not online, or one filed later. An investigation or an FIR is also an allegation, and the presumption of innocence applies until a court decides.

Search the company, the group and the directors, read every hit for the stage and the agency, confirm identity before relying on a match, and record what you covered. This is research to inform a decision, not legal advice.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

ClawScore, at clawscore.clawlaw.in, is Claw's litigation and criminal-risk service, and economic-offence exposure is exactly the kind of high-severity finding it is built to surface and weight. You give it a company or a director's name and it searches every matter across 9,102 courts, benches and forums and returns one scored Excel workbook: a Summary tab with a ClawScore risk band (Clean, Low, Moderate or High) that weights serious criminal and economic-offence matters heavily, a Matters tab, a Related parties tab that pulls in promoters, directors and group entities, and a Coverage tab recording what was searched. Every finding carries a MATCH CONFIDENCE, so a namesake is flagged for you to verify rather than wrongly tied to a fraud case. Its Constant Monitoring runs daily, weekly or monthly scans on a watched list and reports what is New, Changed or Closed. It draws on 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and returns results in under 5 seconds. Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. An investigation or an FIR remains an allegation until a court decides.

Create a FREE Claw account to check economic-offence exposure on a company or director and set up monitoring, and use case search across Indian courts to surface criminal and economic-offence matters against the company, its group and its directors.

08Sources and further reading

• eCourts Services (criminal and special courts): services.ecourts.gov.in
• India Code (BNS and PMLA, bare text): indiacode.nic.in
• Ministry of Corporate Affairs (SFIO references, company status): mca.gov.in
• Enforcement Directorate (PMLA action, where published): enforcementdirectorate.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Government portals are the authoritative record. This guide is general information, not legal advice; an investigation or FIR is an allegation until a court decides, and any finding should be confirmed on the official record.

09Frequently asked questions