ED arrests former NSE CEO Ravi Narain in money-laundering case

• Image Credit: Google

• Sep 7, 2022 | Dhupali Das

The federal investigation agency is looking into his role in two criminal cases involving the bourse...

Digital Desk: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Ravi Narain, the former MD and CEO of the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE), in connection with a money laundering case related to alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of NSE employees.

Narain will be produced before a special court for custody on Wednesday. The federal investigation agency is looking into his role in two criminal cases involving the bourse: the suspected co-location "scam" case and the alleged illegal phone tapping of staff.

Reportedly, the former NSE CEO was arrested in the tapping case under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

In July, the ED filed an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against former Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey and former heads of the NSE for allegedly tapping employees' phones between 2009 and 2017.

Pandey, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer from the 1986 batch, retired on June 30.

During the investigation, it was found that Pandey was closely associated with the operations and activities of a company called iSec Securities Pvt. Ltd. Around the time of the suspected co-location irregularities, the business conducted a security audit of NSE. Pandey founded the business in March 2001, and he resigned as its director in May 2006. His son and mother took over the charge of the company.

This is the second case being investigated by the investigation agency, which is looking into possible money laundering violations in the colocation scam. The problems at the NSE have been a subject of investigation for the past five years, but this is the first time Narain has been arrested.

The ED had earlier detained another former NSE MD and CEO, Chitra Ramkrishna, in the alleged phone tapping case, while the CBI had nabbed her in the co-location case.

It has been claimed that NSE employees' phones were illegally tapped between 2009 and 2017.