In ‘co-location’ case CBI questions former NSE MD Ravi Narayan

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has recorded the statement of Ravi Narayan, former managing director of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Broker.

In the same case registered in May 2018, the agency had last week questioned former NSE managing director Chitra Ramakrishna. The CBI has already issued look-out circulars against him, Sree Narayana and Anand Subramaniam, former operating officer of the group and advisor to the exchange.

“Mr. Narayan was questioned by the CBI team on Saturday. He is presently in Delhi,” said an agency official. Mr. Narayan was the managing director and chief executive officer of NSE from April 1994 to March 31, 2013. He was He was appointed as the Vice-Chairman in the Non-Executive Category on the Board of the Exchange with effect from April 01, 2013 and remained so till June 01, 2017 when he resigned from his position.

The CBI is also likely to record Mr Subramaniam’s statement. Earlier, the Income Tax Department had searched his and Ms. Ramakrishna’s premises in Chennai and Mumbai.

On February 11, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had fined Mr. Subramaniam, NSE and others for violating norms while appointing him as Chief Strategic Adviser and then appointed him as Group Operating Officer and Advisor. was re-designated as Then the managing director of the exchange.

The CBI case is against stock broker OPG Securities, its owner Sanjay Gupta and unidentified SEBI and NSE officials, among others, who have been accused of being involved in a conspiracy that used an algorithmic trading software package named “Chanakya”. Was. Company ahead of others to get market feed from NSE server.

The software, developed by accused Ajay Narottam Shah using NSE trading data collected by him on the pretext of research work in 2005-06, was sold to OPG Securities and some other brokers, as alleged.

As per First Information Report, Mr. Gupta and his brother-in-law, Aman Kakradi, were doing illegal business in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Ghana through OPG Securities. During 2010-12, he obtained illegal access to the server architecture of NSE in conspiracy with the officials of the Exchange by using the “co-location” facility. This enabled the company to log into the server before other brokers.

As it turned out, a load balancer – a tool that facilitates the distribution of network traffic across servers – was set up by the NSE in 2012. While the servers of all other brokers were connected to the primary server, Mr. Gupta got access to the backup server. As the back-up server reportedly had “zero load”, his company gained early access.

21 February, 2022, 8:24 am