The Enforcement Directorate had registered and Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in July against former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey and former heads of the NSE for allegedly tapping the phones of employees between 2009 and 2017. This is the second case being probed by the investigative agency which is probing alleged violation of money laundering norms in the colocation scam. This is the first time Narain has been arrested when the irregularities at NSE had been a matter of investigation for five years now.
According to news agency PTI report, His role is being investigated by the federal probe agency as part of two criminal cases linked to the bourse – the alleged co-location 'scam' case and the purported illegal phone tapping of employees. Narain is understood to have been arrested in the tapping case, under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
He was the managing director and chief executive officer of the exchange from April 1994 to March 31, 2013, and was later appointed as vice-chairman, in the non-executive category, on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) board from April 1, 2013, to June 1, 2017, when he resigned, as per the report.
The ED had earlier arrested another former NSE MD and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna in the alleged phone tapping case while the CBI, which is parallely probing these cases, had arrested her in the co-location case.
It has also arrested former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in the alleged illegal phone tapping case on July 19. The probe agency had earlier told the court that "snooping of phone calls" at the NSE was being done from 1997 allegedly through a company helmed by Pandey and his family members.
The CBI FIR registered on May 19 against Pandey's company, iSec Services, red flags several violations of the SEBI circular by the firm in conducting system audit of stock brokers involved in algorithmic trading using the co-location facility.
(With inputs from PTI)
