New Delhi: Chitra Ramkrishna, the former head of the countryโs largest stock exchange, is being questioned by the CBI over the infamous โtick by tickโ market manipulation case, agency sources told NDTV on Friday.
According to the sources,a FIR, or first information report, was filed in the case previously, but fresh facts have surfaced since then, which is why Ms Ramkrishna is being questioned.
Ms Ramkrishna, previous COO Anand Subramaniam, and her predecessor Ravi Narayan have all been served with notices prohibiting them from leaving the country.
Ms Ramkrishna, who was CEO and Managing Director of the National Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2016 before she quit for โpersonal reasonsโ, is also under investigation for an alleged โglaring breachโ of regulations โ sharing confidential financial data with a โyogiโ living in the Himalayas.
The โtick by tickโ case was registered against OPG Securities; its Managing Director, Sanjay Gupta; Ajay Shah, who helped develop the software; and unknown officials from the NSE and regulatory body SEBI for alleged stock market manipulation from 2010 to 2014.
The โtick by tickโ case was registered against OPG Securities; its Managing Director, Sanjay Gupta; Ajay Shah, who helped develop the software; and unknown officials from the NSE and regulatory body SEBI for alleged stock market manipulation from 2010 to 2014.
The case has to do with the alleged unfair dissemination of information from the market exchangeโs computer server to those of stock brokers. Both were set up in the same area โ a scenario called co-location โ offering the brokers a 10:1 (approximate) speed advantage over their competitors.
For the period of investigation (2010-2014), information was sent in a sequential manner from the stock exchangeโs servers to the brokersโ through โtick by tickโ-based system architecture.
This meant the broker who connected first to the stock exchangeโs server received โticksโ, or the market feed, before the broker who connected later, giving him/her valuable information.
It is alleged that Sanjay Gupta had unfair access to this feed and this enabled his company, OPG Security Pvt Ltd, to access financial data a split second faster than his rivals.
And in the cutthroat world of stock markets, this is a massive advantage for any trader.
Yesterday, premises in Mumbai and other locations owned by Ms Ramkrishna and others were searched by the Income Tax Department in connection with the allegations she shared the bourseโs financial projections, business plans and board agenda with a spiritual guru.
The guru was running the exchange and Ms Ramkrishna was โa puppetโ, SEBI has claimed.
Ms Ramkrishna has claimed the information- sharing did not compromise NSE operations.
The NSE, Ms Ramkrishna and senior official Anand Subramanian have been โน 2 crore each, and the exchange has been barred from launching new products for at least six months.
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