Chitra says phones of staff tapped to check leak of info: Officials
Former National Stock Exchange (NSE) managing director Chitra Ramkrishna has told the Enforcement Directorate ( ED) that monitoring of phones at the bourse was done to ensure there was no leak of critical data, including passwords and reports, people familiar with the development said.
ED has, however, countered her claims saying the act was clear “illegal interception” as employees were not kept in the loop about their phone lines being put under surveillance for years, said officials.
The federal agency last week told a Delhi court that it has gathered reliable material that suggests Ramkrishna was listening to NSE employees since 1997. She was arrested by the ED on July 14 in an alleged case of money laundering and illegal phone-tapping and was interrogated at length last week.
On former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey, currently being interrogated in custody, ED has found that he not only was actively involved in discussions and meetings with the NSE on behalf of iSec Services Pvt Ltd — a firm he founded in 2001 — but also operated an email ID to discuss day-to-day matters related to the illegal activity and passed on instructions to iSec representatives.
Pandey has argued that he stepped down from iSec in 2006 and engaged himself in the affairs of the company only peripherally while the company was run by his family members. iSeC is accused of tapping phones of NSE employees between 2009 and 2017 for which it received ₹4.54 crore.
Refuting Pandey’s claim, a senior ED officer, requesting anonymity, said: “We have found that Pandey had issued instructions regarding submission of proposals dated January 22, 2016, February 9, 2015, February 7, 2014, June 27, 2013 and February 5, 2013 pertaining to monitoring of telephone calls of NSE employees to an iSec employee. He was using contactus@isec.co.in for communicating.”
He also interacted regularly with NSE officials on the monitoring activities, the officer said.
“It was him who decided to call this project “cyber vulnerability studies”. So, his claim that he was not active with iSec after 2006 is a lie,” the officer added.
Between 2009 and 2017 iSec was issued work orders on the pretext of study of cyber vulnerabilities at the NSE in connivance with Ramkrishna, ED has claimed.
ED has also claimed that Pandey attended the initial meeting of the award of contract to iSec in 2009 by visiting NSE. Ramkrishna (who was deputy managing director at that time), ex-MD Ravi Narain, former executive vice president of NSE, Ravi Varanasi, and its former head (premises) Mahesh Haldipur were present in the meeting, it added.
The agency added that NSE was provided with four Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines, each with a capacity of 30 telephone connections, originating at MTNL and terminated at EPABX (electronic private automatic branch exchange) of NSE.
“Between January 1, 2009 and February 13, 2017, iSec was monitoring/ intercepting calls of these four PRI lines used by employees of NSE and submitted copies of transcript of conversations to the top management of the bourse,” ED said.
The employees whose incoming and outgoing calls were being intercepted were from various departments — market watch, market surveillance and risk management — which have access to critical online information and real-time databases.
ED further said in the court that Naman Chaturvedi, a representative of iSec, was deputed for providing confidential reports titled “monitoring reports for call logs” to Ravi Varanasi. None of these reports had anything about cyber vulnerabilities of NSE, ED has claimed.