Preferential access case: IT department raids homes of former and current officials of NSE

Two days after the NSE submitted reports from forensic auditors EY and ISB to SEBI, the IT department is believed to be raiding homes of top former and serving officials of the exchange.

According to a report in the Economics Times, the department has also searched the home of a broker who is believed to have got preferential access to the servers helping him make unfair profits.

Interestingly, the ET report states that the raid might not be linked to the preferential access issue, and that EY and ISB have given a clean chit to the exchange and its officials.

These conclusions however contradict the findings of two previous forensic audits, one by Deloitte and another by a committee of two IIT professors constituted by markets regulator SEBI which stated that NSE’s trading systems were vulnerable to exploitation.

Meanwhile, a report in Moneycontrol said that the list of officials including the names of former MDs Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkirshna, Suprabhat Lala and promoter of OPG securities, Sanjay Gupta.

However, Narain told Moneycontrol that no raids were conducted at his house, a claim contradicted by IT officials who said massive searches are on and no one will be spared. In the …read more