ED RECORDS STATEMENT OF EX-NSE MD IN CO-LOCATION CASE

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) recently questioned former National Stock Exchange (NSE) chief executive officer (CEO) Chitra Ramkrishna as part of a money laundering investigation in the co-location fraud case.

Ramkrishna, who is lodged inside Tihar jail, was questioned for several hours and her statement was recorded under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following permission from a Delhi court, officials familiar with the matter said.

Ramkrishna was arrested on March 6 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with its 2018 probe into the alleged stock market manipulation. Former group operating officer (GOO) Anand Subramanian was also arrested in this regard on February 25.

The ED has also been probing the case since January 2019 on the basis of the CBI’S first information report (FIR) in 2018.

In the co-location case registered by CBI in 2018, the central probe agency booked a Delhibased stock broker OPG Securities Pvt Ltd and its owner, Sanjay Gupta, for allegedly making gains by getting early access to the stock market trading system. The agency is also probing unidentified officials of markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the NSE, Mumbai, and other unknown persons in the case.

On February 11 this year, Sebi charged Ramkrishna with alleged governance lapses in the appointment of Subramanian as the chief strategic advisor and his re-designation as group operating officer and advisor to MD. The regulator also imposed a fine of ₹3 crore on Ramkrishna, ₹2 crore each on NSE, Subramanian and Narain, and ₹6 lakh on V R Narasimhan, the chief regulatory and compliance officer.

The ED intends to dig deeper into the alleged irregularities in the wake of new facts that emerged during the CBI probe and in a February 11 report by Sebi, an official familiar with the matter had said earlier.