IT department searches Mumbai residence of former NSE CEO

A person familiar with the matter said in the morning, “IT officials are at his residence in Mumbai.”

This person said that Ramakrishna was suspected of making illegal profits when he passed on information about internal exchanges to an unidentified third person.

The finding follows an order of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on February 11 that found serious lapses in governance and ethical conduct by the former chief executive officer of the NSE.

SEBI alleges that Ramakrishna was sharing confidential information related to the exchange with an unidentified third person and fined him 3 crore on that.

“Sharing of NSE’s financial and business plans is not an unimaginable act, which may shake the foundation of the stock exchange,” the market regulator said.

His second serious lapse was in the appointment of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of NSE – allegedly following an email by an unidentified person – without approving the appointment by the Nomination and Remuneration Committee, which was in violation of regulatory norms.

According to the SEBI order, it was “an apparent conspiracy of money-making scheme” involving Ramakrishna and COO Anand Subramaniam along with an unidentified person. According to NSE, the ‘Himalayan Yogi’ was none other than Subramaniam, but SEBI said it did not see enough evidence to support the allegation.

The current Chief Executive Officer of NSE, Vikram Limaye, met the Finance Minister on Wednesday and gave details of the organisation’s programmes.

Ramakrishna resigned in December 2016.

This is the second income tax investigation against Ramakrishna. The first was in connection with the so-called co-location scam in November 2017.

The Income Tax Department in Delhi and its Mumbai branch have launched NSE’s high-speed algorithmic trading (algo-) trading platform.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was already probing the case of preferential access to the NSE algo-trading platform and filed a First Information Report (FIR) in the case on 30 May 2018 against OPG Securities promoter Sanjay Gupta; his brother-in-law Aman Kakradi; Ajay Shah, who facilitated Gupta’s operations by developing and providing a software called Chanakya; and some other unnamed officials of NSE and SEBI. In May 2019, the agency submitted a status report to the Delhi High Court stating that its investigation was no longer limited to the original complaint.

In a written reply in Parliament in July 2021, the government said that the investigation of the CBI is still on.

“A case is already being investigated by the CBI. These new facts uncovered in the SEBI order can be used by the agency to broaden its investigation. Leakage of sensitive information by Ramakrishna is one of the most serious offences. The CBI has been able to verify whether there has been any financial loss to the institution and the correct identity of the recipient of the data,” said a person familiar with the matter.