New Delhi: In the wake of growing "white collar" crime globally, the CBI has formed an "Economic Intelligence Wing" to tackle it even as list of run away economic offenders was being readied for extradition.

Highly-placed agency sources told reporters that the new wing had been formed to tackle the growing menace of economic crime as it had developed a dangerous trend of financing terrorist crimes with September 11 attacks in US as a pointer.

CBI has recruited a senior official of Reserve Bank of India as a technical officer to the wing along with some Deputy Inspectors General of the agency who have been specialising in probing economic offences, the sources said.

The first and foremost task of the wing is to track down economic offenders who have fled the country after committing a crime and duping banks and other financial institutions of crores of rupees.

The wing has been tasked to gather intelligence and also share and act on information being provided by organisations like Stock Exchange Board of India and Intelligence Bureau.

Meanwhile, efforts were on to bring back economic offenders like Manjit Singh Makan, Virendra Rastogi and his brother Narendra, Amarendra Nath Gosh and J B S Bakshi, who fled the country after duping several banks and institutions of crores of rupees.

PTI