BSH NEWS
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) met some officials of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) over the weekend to discuss the findings of its probe into the National Stock Exchange (NSE) colocation case, said people with knowledge of the matter. The CBI team visited Sebi headquarters in Mumbai to seek information from six to seven officials who had investigated the unfair NSE access between 2015 and 2019, they said.
The agency is learnt to have also collected some crucial documents relevant to the case. It sought details that went beyond Sebi’s February 11 order detailing NSE’s lapses as well as former chief Chitra Ramkrishna sharing confidential information with an apparent mystic, one of the persons said.
“Sebi officials were asked to give a timeline of investigations, such as when did the markets regulator get to know of different dimensions in the case, what steps it took and when, and details it sought from the NSE,” the official said.
Sebi and CBI didn’t respond to queries. While enquiring about various aspects of the recent Sebi order, CBI also asked about the yogi mentioned in it, the officials said.
The agency is said to be tracking the email address for the guru mentioned in the forensic audit and cited by Sebi in its order.
Audit Report
The regulator had appointed EY and Deloitte to investigate the NSE colocation case. EY’s report in 2018 provided a detailed study of emails exchanged between Ramkrishna and the unknown person. That audit report identified the yogi as former NSE group operating officer Anand Subramanian, but the regulator said the evidence did not support that point.
On Monday, CBI questioned Subramanian after grilling Ramkrishna and former NSE chief executive Ravi Narain over the weekend. Sebi officials said some delays occurred as the exchange took time to respond to its queries and also because the colocation issue was complex. However, after EY’s forensic audit in 2018, it looked into all the report’s findings, they told CBI.
The regulatory officials are learnt to have also briefed CBI about the multiple orders issued in the case against the former NSE management and Delhi-based brokerage OPG Securities.
Based on the details gathered, the federal agency may approach former and current NSE officials this week and could also revert to the regulator, if need be, another person said.
Notably, CBI filed its first information report against OPG Securities in 2018, naming its directors and unidentified people belonging to NSE and Sebi. However, at that time, the probe was limited to broker links and possible connivance with former NSE management. CBI had alleged that OPG Securities and its directors managed to manipulate the Sebi inquiry against the role of brokers in the misuse of the tick-by-tick (TBT) architecture of NSE servers by bribing regulatory officials.
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