In its crackdown on corporate fraud and chit fund scams, the government has, during the last three years and current year, ordered investigations of 145 companies allegedly involved in illegal deposit taking, parliament was told on Friday."'Fraud' has been defined as a substantive offence in the Companies Act, 2013 and its section 143(12) requires the auditor of a company to report any fraud to the board of directors or audit committee of that company or to the central government, depending on the amount of fraud," Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.West Bengal tops the list of states with companies under investigation both in the last fiscal as well as the current one.