OPG Securities MD held in NSE co-location case
NEW DELHI: The CBI has arrested Delhi-based broker and managing director of OPG Securities Sanjay Gupta in the NSE scam, four years after the agency registered an FIR against him for alleged preferential access of the market through multiple IDs and secondary servers called co-location facility, officials said on Wednesday.
The CBI has alleged that it received information that Gupta along with some people attempted to destroy some evidence and also tried to influence Sebi officials who were probing the NSE co-location scam case.
The agency had summoned Gupta to its headquarters where he was questioned, they said. During the questioning, Gupta was “evasive” and tried to “mislead the investigation” resulting in his arrest on Tuesday night, officials said.
They said Gupta had allegedly approached members of a syndicate to bribe Sebi officials on his behalf and influence the investigation, they said.
The CBI is probing whether the bribes paid to the syndicate members reached Sebi officials or not, they said.
Similar allegations were also levelled against Gupta in the CBI FIR registered in 2018. The agency swung into action after a damning Sebi report in February this year in which strictures were passed against the then NSE CEO and managing director
Chitra Ramkrishna and group operating officer Anand Subramanian.
It is alleged that OPG Securities consistently logged in first on selected Tick-by-Tick servers of the NSE for four years on most of the trading days between 2010 and 2014 and also had access to servers that had better hardware. A tick is a minimum change in the price of security. It is alleged that Tick-by-Tick architecture used by the NSE was manipulated by brokers to remain ahead of peers in trading hours. Deloittee Touche Thmatsu, which did a forensic review of the NSE’s co-location facility, found that OPG Securities was the first in most cases during trading sessions.
The CBI had earlier arrested Ramkrishna and Subramanian, not named in the FIR, in connection with the case and both are in judicial custody since March.
The special court had repeatedly questioned the CBI about the action it has taken against other accused—Gupta and OPG Securities—named in the FIR.