Former NSE chief accused of sharing information with Himalayan Yogi

new Delhi: Chitra Ramakrishna, former head of India’s largest stock exchange, is being questioned by the CBI in the infamous ‘tick by tick’ stock market manipulation case, sources told NDTV on Friday.

Sources said that earlier an FIR was registered in this case, but since then new facts have come to light, hence Ramakrishna is being questioned.

The CBI has also posted notices against Ms Ramakrishna, former COO Anand Subramaniam and her predecessor Ravi Narayan, to prevent them from leaving the country.

Ms Ramakrishna, who was CEO and managing director of the National Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2016 before she resigned for “personal reasons”, is also being investigated for an alleged “glaring breach” of the rules – a’ Sharing confidential financial data with ‘Yogi’. Living in the Himalayas.

‘Tick by tick’ case was registered against OPG Securities; its managing director, Sanjay Gupta; Ajay Shah, who helped develop the software; and unidentified officials of NSE and regulatory body SEBI for alleged stock market manipulation from 2010 to 2014.

The case pertains to alleged improper dissemination of information from the computer servers of the market exchanges to the stock brokers. Both were set in the same area – a scenario called co-location – giving brokers a 10:1 (estimated) speed advantage over their competitors.

For the period of investigation (2010-2014), the information was sent from the servers of the stock exchanges to the brokers in a sequential manner through a ‘tick by tick’-based system architecture.

This meant that the broker who was earlier connected to the server of the stock exchange received the first ‘tick’ or market feed from the connected broker later, giving him valuable information.

It is alleged that Sanjay Gupta had improper access to this feed and this enabled his company, OPG Security Pvt Ltd, to access financial data a split second faster than its rivals.

And in the cutthroat world of stock markets, this is a huge advantage for any trader.

Yesterday, searches at the premises in Mumbai and other locations owned by Ms. Ramakrishna and others were conducted by the Income Tax Department in connection with allegations that the exchange had shared financial projections, business plans and the board’s agenda with a spiritual guru. .

SEBI has claimed that Guru was running the exchange and Ms Ramakrishna was a “puppet”.

Ms Ramakrishna has claimed that information-sharing did not compromise the operations of the NSE.

NSE, Ms Ramakrishna and senior executive Anand Subramaniam have been given Rs 2 crore each, and the exchange has been barred from launching new products for at least six months.

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