ED Arrests Ex-NSE Chairman Ravi Narain In Money Laundering Case

Ravi Narain, former chairman of the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday.

Former NSE Chairman Ravi Narain. (File Photo/ Getty)

Ravi Narain, former chairman of the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday in connection with a money-laundering case, officials told news agency PTI. According to reports, Narain's role is being investigated by the federal probe agency as part of two criminal cases linked to the bourse. He has been booked in an alleged co-location 'scam' case and the purported illegal phone tapping of employees.

It is being reported that the former NSE Chairman has been arrested in the tapping case under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

He will be produced before a special court tomorrow for custody.

The development comes months after ED had registered Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) and arrested another former National Stock Exchange (NSE) MD and CEO Chitra Ramkrishna in the alleged phone tapping case while the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is parallely probing these cases, had arrested her in the co-location case. 

ED had also arrested former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey in the alleged illegal phone tapping case. 

Irregularities at NSE is being investigated by ED since last five years. However, Narain has been arrested for the first time in the case.

ED 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.

CBI had registered an FIR against Pandey's company iSec Services on May 19 and had observed several violations of the SEBI circular by the firm in conducting system audit of stock brokers.

The SEBI had listed brokers into three categories - low, medium and high-risk, based on their trading mode and through various circulars issued from time to time prescribed different norms of conducting system audits according to their risk profiles.

The high-risk brokers required a system audit of their algorithmic trading system every six months with an auditor only allowed to conduct three successive audits, the CBI had said.