NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested the Managing Director of Delhi-based OPG Pvt. Ltd Sanjay Gupta in connection with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location case in which brokers allegedly abused the facility to make gains by getting early access to the stock market, officials said on Wednesday.
Sanjay Gupta was named among the key beneficiaries in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location scam.
"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 the said company using the co-location facility during the period 2010-2012 that enabled it to login first to the exchange server of Stock Exchange that helped to get the data before any other broker in the market," the CBI has alleged in the FIR.
Last month, the CBI conducted searches against brokers at more than 10 locations in different parts of the country in connection with the alleged co-location scam. Searches were conducted in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gandhinagar, Noida, and Gurugram.
The CBI finds in its investigations, that pertains to allegations of brokers, who are being preferred as co-location facilities in NSE's trading system, through which they purchased "rack space" for their servers.
According to the investigating agency's first information report (FIR), "these traders quickly gained access to the exchange's data feed."
The central agency CBI had arrested former MD of NSE Chitra Ramkrishna and NSE Group operating officer Anand Subramanian. CBI filed a charge sheet against them in the month of April.
In the NSE co-Location case, the CBI said that the investigation states that accused Chitra Ramakrishna, by misusing her official position, re-designated the post of accused Anand Subramanian as Group Operating Officer and Advisor to MD from April 1, 2015, without bringing the same to the notice of NRC and the board.
The CBI is probing the alleged improper dissemination of information from the computer servers of the market exchanges to the stockbrokers. Earlier, the capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) penalized the NSE and its former CEOs Chitra Ramakrishna and Ravi Narayan, and two other officials for lapses in recruitment at the senior level.
The market regulator SEBI observed that the NSE and its top executives violated securities contract norms relating to the appointment of Anand Subramaniam as group operating officer and advisor to the managing director. Chitra Ramkrishna was the MD and CEO of the NSE from April 2013 to December 2016.