The Securities and Exchange Board of India on Thursday exonerated three former executives of the NSE in the co-location case.

SEBI exonerated Subramanian Anand, who was accused of failing to perform his role in establishing adequate systems leading to the scenario whereby certain brokers were allowed to breach the norms of fair and equitable access. Subramanian Anand served as Chief Strategic Officer (between April 2013 and March 2014) and Group Operating Officer (April 2014 to October 2016) of the NSE.

SEBI also exonerated former Chief Technology Officers Umesh Jain (October 2012 to June 2015) and Ravi Apte (2007 to September 2012), who were accused of having shown laxity and dereliction of duty by not taking adequate steps to make the exchange’s tick-by-tick (TBT) facility robust and prevent it from being manipulated during the times relevant to the case.

The regulator found Mahesh Soparkarand and Deviprasad Singh, who were head of the Project Support and Management (PSM) to have failed to discharge their duties as PSM team heads, which included monitoring the access to Secondary Server by trading members from time to time and administering uniform standards of discipline against them.

Internal enquiry

However, the regulator also found such conduct to be suitable for handling by the NSE “so as to fix accountability on the employees, as deemed fit and appropriate.” Accordingly, the NSE has been directed to initiate enquiry under its Employees Regulations against these two noticees and submit a report to SEBI within six months from the date of order.

However, the SEBI order said the case does not warrant imposition of any monetary penalty on these NSE staff.

In a separate (co-location) order, the market regulator has also exonerated Aman Kokrady, who was earlier with OPG Securities as software architect. It said the case does not warrant imposition of any monetary penalty on Aman Kokrady and disposed of the show-cause notice served on him.

Bars OPG Sec for 5 years

In April this year, SEBI had barred OPG Securities and three of its directors from accessing the capital market for five years and imposed a penalty of ₹15.57 crore along with interest of 12 per cent per annum from April 7, 2014. It had also barred OPG Securities from taking on any new clients for a period of one year.

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