Taking cognizance on Saturday, Special Judge Sunena Sharma said, “I find sufficient material to take cognizance. Accordingly, I take cognizance of the offense of money laundering punishable under Section 4 of PMLA against all the four accused.”
“I have carefully perused the contents of the complaint, statements of accused persons and witnesses registered under section 50 PMLA and the documents filed along with the complaints,” the court said.
The complaint was lodged through the Assistant Director, Directorate of Enforcement, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Consequently, the examination of the complainant is not required and the court ruled that the examination of the complainant was not necessary.
The ED had filed a chargesheet in this regard in the Delhi Rouse Avenue Court on September 9. NSE money laundering case.
The chargesheet named Chitra Ramakrishna, Ravi Narayan (both former CEOs of NSE), former Mumbai Police Commissioner and Sanjay Pandey, a private firm, as suspects in the alleged tapping of NSE officials’ phones and other irregularities.
M/s Isec Services Pvt Ltd is accused of illegally tapping the phones of NSE employees between 2009 and 2017. Telephone monitoring was done by NSE without the consent and knowledge of the employees using Iseq. Compulsory permission of the Competent Authority was also not taken as per Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act.
The ED claimed that in the name of its cyber vulnerability study, ISAC was monitoring all incoming and outgoing calls from landline numbers of employees working in the market surveillance department and others who had access to trading data.
NSE has released around Rs. 4.54 crores to iSec for this “illegal” activity and also sold machines used for illegal surveillance/intercept as e-waste scrap in 2019.
Former NSE CEO Ravi Narayan was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in August 2022 in a money laundering case.
According to ED, iSec was founded in 2001 by Sanjay Pandey, who also held 50% stake in the company till 2006. He was one of its two directors until May 2006, and visited NSE to represent iSec during its initial period. Meetings for the award of this contract in 2009. At that time, NSE was represented by Ravi Narayan (MD), Chitra Ramakrishna (DMD), Ravi Varanasi and Mahesh Haldipur Head (Campus), NSE.
Even after this, Sanjay Pandey resigned from the board of directors of the company, he continued to work as an advisor to the company and was involved in discussions with NSE on behalf of iSec at various stages, as per the evidence. He also met the officials of NSE on behalf of ISEC.
Sanjay Pandey, a 1986 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who retired on June 30, 2022, was aware of the recording of phone calls of NSE employees. He also sent reports from time to time to Ravi Varanasi, the then head of business operations of NSE. These reports included details of individual suspicious calls and transcripts of the said calls.
According to the ED, top officials of NSE including accused Chitra Ramakrishna conspired with M/s Isec to defraud NSE and its employees. The company, ISEC, was hired to illegally intercept the phone calls of NSE employees as part of this criminal conspiracy.
The agency also claimed that Ravi Narayan had held the position of managing director of NSE from 2009 to 2013, and was aware of the tapping of phone calls of NSE employees. was also the one who introduced the accused Chitra Ramakrishna Sanjay Pandey, accused of Isec Services Pvt Ltd. Ltd.
He was a part of the NSE decision making process which resulted in the decision to appoint M/s Isec Services Pvt. Ltd. was started for the above work from 1st January 2009 and the work was completed under the guise of periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has also registered a case in the alleged National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location scam, which involved phone tapping of NSE employees in response to the orders of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
With inputs from ANI.
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