Phones of NSE employees tapped since ’97: ED seeks five-day custody of ex-MD Chitra
In what hints at a larger conspiracy to control the activities of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) by its former managing director Chitra Ramkrishna, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has learnt during interrogation of three persons that phone-tapping of bourse’s employees was going on since 1997.
Documentary evidence in this regard has already been collected and it will now be confronted with Ramkrishna, the federal anti-money laundering probe agency said on Monday.
Chitra Ramkrishna
“Ramkrishna was confronted with three persons and their statements have also been recorded and the interrogation has revealed that phone tapping/ snooping of calls of NSE employees was going (on) since 1997 and pursuant thereto, documentary evidence pertaining to said period was collected and same is now required to be confronted to Ramkrishna,” ED said in a Delhi court while seeking Ramkrishna’s further five days’ custody. She was taken into ED custody on Thursday.
The agency did not name the “three persons” confronted with Ramkrishna.
The revelation widens the ambit of probe as it was earlier found that NSE employees’ phones were tapped between 2009 and 2017 using iSEC Services, a company founded by former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey, an officer said requesting anonymity.
Ramkrishna has been associated with the NSE in different roles since its formation in early 1990s. ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are investigating her role in multiple irregularities, including misuse of co-location facility by some stockbrokers, appointment of a close aide – Anand Subramanian at an important position in the exchange and the phone tapping. She was arrested on March 6. ED claimed on Monday that it needed to confront the former MD “with some more persons involved or suspected to be involved in the tapping as well as to confront her with some newly collected evidence of tapping to determine her role as well as role of other persons who facilitated the offence of money laundering”.