The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police has arrested Jignesh Shah, promoter of Financial Technologies, in connection with the ₹5,600-crore National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) crisis. Shah will be produced in the Bombay High Court on Thursday.

The EOW has also arrested Shreekant Javalgekar, former chief of Multi Commodities Exchange of India (MCX).

“Both the accused were members of NSEL and MCX,” said Additional Commissioner of Mumbai Police (EOW) Rajvardhan Sinha, at a hurriedly arranged press conference.

“It has also been revealed during the course of the investigation that a major portion of the profit was linked to Financial Technologies, which was purely a technology company. The value of trading was linked to NSEL. We have found that there were wrongful gains. They were not cooperating and were evasive in replies. We then concluded that custodial interrogation is necessary.”

Jignesh Shah is the Chairman and Group Chief Executive officer of Financial Technologies (India) Ltd (FTIL) and holds a 45.5 per cent stake in the company along with his family. FTIL holds 26 per cent in MCX and 99.99 per cent in NSEL.

Financial Technologies has been ordered by regulators to bring its stake in MCX down to 2 per cent within the next 90 days.

The settlement crisis at NSEL blew up in July 2013 when the exchange suspended trading in all its contracts. Subsequently, NSEL proposed a payout plan, which it has, however, not been able to implement successfully.

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