As many as 17 firms have been probed by the government's investigation arm the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) for corporate frauds in the current financial year so far, the Parliament was informed by Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley.

With this, a total of 81 companies have been probed for corporate frauds by SFIO since 2011-12.

SFIO investigated 20 companies in 2011-12 and 22 firms each in 2012-13 and 2013-14 for alleged corporate frauds, Jaitley said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

The government "has taken a number of measures to curb and prevent corporate frauds" like making fraud a substantive offence and providing statutory status to SFIO, under the new companies law, Jaitley said.

Stricter norms of corporate governance under the Companies Act 2013 as well as increasing application of technology for early detection of frauds through data analysis surveillance and usage of forensic tool are among the other steps taken by the government to prevent fraud by companies, the minister said.