ED arrests former NSE chief Ravi Narain in money laundering case

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Ravi Narain, the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD and CEO) of the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE), in a money laundering case involving alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of NSE employees.

On July 14, the anti-money laundering agency filed a criminal case against him, ex-NSE chief Chitra Ramakrishna, and former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The trio had previously been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly tapping the phones of NSE employees between 2009 and 2017.

Narain's arrest comes just a week after ED Special Public Prosecutor N K Matta testified in a Delhi court that he and other accused conspired to defraud the NSE and its employees. They worked with iSEC Services Pvt Ltd, a firm linked to Pandey, to illegally intercept phone calls of exchange employees under the guise of conducting a periodic study of NSE cyber vulnerabilities, Matta was quoted as saying before the bench by news agency PTI.

Narain was the NSE's CEO from 1994 to 2013, and Chitra took over as CEO between 2013 and 2016. The co-location scam, in which both are named as defendants, refers to the case in which the then-NSE brass are accused of providing unfair access to a group of high-frequency traders in order to speed up algorithmic trading.