Key appointment: SEBI fines NSE, its former MDs

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 12

The Security & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Friday issued an order penalising the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and its former Managing Directors (MD) and Chief Executive Officers Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain and others for violating securities contract rules in a case related to the appointment of Anand Subramanian as group operating officer and adviser to the MD.

190-page order

Chitra Ramkrishna was guided by a yogi residing in the Himalayas for appointment of Anand Subramanian as NSE’s chief operating officer in 2013, says SEBI order

The market regulator has levied a fine of Rs 3 crore on Ramkrishna, Rs 2 crore each on the NSE, Narain and Subramanian and Rs 6 lakh on VR Narasimhan, who was the chief regulatory officer and chief compliance officer.

The SEBI in its 190-page order has concluded that Ramkrishna was guided by a yogi residing in the Himalayas for appointment of Subramanian as NSE’s chief operating officer in 2013. The appointment cost NSE Rs 5 crore. The SEBI has also barred the NSE from launching any new product for six months.

Further, Ramkrishna and Subramanian have been restrained from associating with any market infrastructure institution or intermediary registered with SEBI for three years, while the same for Narain is two years. Also, SEBI has directed the NSE to forfeit Ramkrishna’s excess leave encashment of Rs 1.54 crore and deferred bonus of Rs 2.83 crore, which was retained by the NSE, and deposit the same in its ‘Investor Protection Fund Trust’ .

The order read: “Noticee no.1 (Ramkrishna) has made incorrect and misleading submission before NSE that the unknown person was a ‘siddha-purusha’, who did not have physical persona and could materialise at will.” It said Ramkrishna continuously shared “internal confidential information of NSE with an unknown person” whom she had never met for almost 20 years, but communicated through emails. “Their spiritual powers do not require them to have any such physical coordinates and would manifest at will,” Ramkrishna had responded to the SEBI query.

The SEBI said an email from the ‘siddha-purusha’ even carried the diktat that Subramanian be exempt from the contractual five-day work week and instead be asked to come only for three days. “Noticee no. 6 (Subramanian) was also an accomplice with the unknown person who influenced the decision of Noticee no. 1 (Ramkrishna) and, thereby, benefiting himself by being re-designated as ‘group operating officer and adviser to MD’ and having the compensation being paid to him increase substantially each year, upon the advice of the unknown person to Noticee no. 1,” the order read.

“From the record of events..., it is clear that there has been a conspiracy for the appointment and rise of Noticee no. 6 in the NSE,” it added.

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