MUMBAI: After the Sebi and income tax department, it was the turn of the CBI to question Chitra Ramkrishna, former NSE MD and CEO, in light of newly emerging facts at her residence on Friday, a source said.
The CBI has also opened a lookout circular (LOC) against Ms Ramkrishna, Ravi Narain, Ramakrishna’s predecessor and Anand Subramanian, ex-group operating officer and advisor to MD.
An LOC is issued to ensure that those wanted by legal agencies don't leave the country .
The CBI had registered a case against Ramkrishna and the owner and promoter of Delhi-based OPG Securities Pvt.Ltd, Sanjay Gupta, in the co-location scam, whereby allegedly preferential access was given to certain brokers on NSE, who benefited from getting information fractions of seconds before other market participants.
The CBI was also investigating unidentified officials of Sebi and NSE and other unknown persons.
"It was alleged that the owner and promoter of said private company abused the server architecture of NSE in conspiracy with unknown officials of NSE. It was also alleged that unknown officials of NSE, Mumbai had provided unfair access to said company using the co-location facility during the period 2010-2012 that enabled it to login first to the exchange server of the stock exchange that helped to get the data before any other broker in the market," the CBI alleged in their FIR.
Income Tax authorities had begun searching Ramkrishna's and her former advisor Anand Subramanian's premises for suspected evasion on Thursday. The searches continue on Friday.
Ramkrishna's troubles began last week when Sebi in an order penalised and barred her from dealing with any Market Infrastructure Institution for allegedly sharing sensitive exchange related information with an unknown person.
Ramkrishna termed the unknown person a "spiritual force" whom she relied upon for personal and professional guidance.
Sebi in its order called the sharing of financial projections and other confidential details a most "blatant" thing to do.
"If such confidential and sensitive information of NSE could be blatantly, if not shamelessly, shared over official emails by Ramkrishna, one can only fathom how much more confidential information has been shared over private emails, phone or word of mouth," the Sebi order had noted.
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