The former CEO and MD of the National Stock Exchange is being questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) regarding market manipulation in the infamous NSE co-location scam, NDTV reported citing sources.
The development comes a day after the Income Tax Department raided her apartment in Mumbai as part of a tax evasion investigation against her and others. Notably, the central agency had earlier filed a case in the co-location scam and has posted notices against Ramkrishna, Ravi Narain, former NSE‘s MD and CEO, and Anand Subramaniam, the exchange's group operating officer and advisor to MD.
The co-location scam or what is commonly referred to as a ‘tick-by-tick’ case pertains to 2012-2014 when some traders got preferential access in NSE's co-location facility like early logins, and split-second access to the data feed in the exchange, resulting in huge gains by the trader. NSE introduced the co-location facility in 2009, wherein the stock exchange allowed traders to place their servers in NSE’s data centre, thus benefitting the traders by having faster access to the price feed, which is distributed by the stock exchange.
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The case came to light in 2015 after a whistleblower filed a written complaint to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) alleging market manipulation by some traders. The three-year-long SEBI investigation revealed that some traders had multiple IP addresses in dissemination servers and secondary servers for accessing the data, resulting in market manipulation. OPG Securities was one such broker which gained early log-in access and manipulated the market. A case had been earlier registered against OPG Securities, its Director Sanjay Gupta, and unknown NSE officials.
Ramkrishna, who was NSE’s MD and CEO from 2013 to 2016, is also under investigation for sharing confidential information regarding NSE with a mysterious ‘Yogi’ residing in the Himalayas, whom she claimed to be her mentor and for appointing Anand Subramaniam.
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