The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested former group operating officer (GOO) of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Anand Subramanian in connection with its probe into a 2018 stock market manipulation case. He was arrested from his Chennai house late Thursday night, according to sources. The former GOO of NSE will be taken to federal body’s headquarters in Delhi and produced before a local court for custody. This was the first arrest in the case.
Anand Subramanian was the chief strategic advisor from April 1, 2013. Later, he was re-designated as group operating officer (GOO) and advisor to Chitra Ramakrishna when she was managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) from April 01, 2015, till October 21, 2016.
The CBI earlier questioned Subramanian for three days, ending on February 21. The federal police also interrogated former managing director and chief operating officer Chitra Ramkrishna and former chief operating officer Ravi Narain in the NSE co-location scam. Earlier this week, a team of CBI visited the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) office in Mumbai to collect documents related to the case.
Sebi reported that Ramkrishna shared confidential NSE data and sought advice from an outsider she described as a ‘Himalayan yogi’ over the years. Ramkrishna — who quit as chief executive officer in 2016 — was “merely a puppet” of someone she described as an unnamed yogi in Himalayas who “would manifest at will”, according to the regulator.
Sebi also penalised Ramkrishna and a few others for allegedly violating securities contract rules in the appointment of Subramanian as GOO and advisor to the MD. The market regulator also said that the former CEO “arbitrarily” appointed Subramanian as her adviser, adding he had “no relevant experience”. The regulatory report also indicated that Anand Subramaniam was impersonating as the unknown ‘yogi’ and instructing Chitra regarding his salary and designation.
NSE Co-location Scam
The NSE co-location case relates to country’s biggest bourse providing some high frequency traders unfair access to speed up algorithmic trading. Sebi has flagged the case in 2018. Following the report, the Income Tax Department searched the residences of Ramkrishna and Subramanian as part of its probe.
The CBI had booked Sanjay Gupta, owner and promoter of Delhi-based OPG Securities Pvt Ltd, and others in the NSE co-location scam. “Gupta, with the help of his brother-in-law Aman Kokrady and other unknown persons, managed the data centre staff of NSE, who passed the information regarding switching on time of NSE exchange servers. Further, unknown officials of NSE gave OPG Securities Pvt Ltd access to servers which were technologically latest and least crowded at that particular period. This helped OPG Securities Pvt Ltd. in being mostly the first one to login on the exchange server of the NSE,” the CBI FIR said.
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