Politicians are apparently not the only ones living in the thrall of a Yogi.
The capital market watchdog has now uncovered a bizarre tale of how a former chairperson of the country’s largest bourse – the National Stock Exchange – was manipulated by a “Siddha Purusha/Yogi i.e. a Paramahansa who maybe largely dwelling in the Himalayan ranges”.
This is the tale of Chitra Ramkrishna – the disgraced chief of the National Stock Exchange who left the bourse under a cloud in 2016 amid a litany of charges surrounding an algo trading scam that was made possible because of shenanigans at the bourse where select players received market price information faster than the rest and were able to front run the market.
Last Friday, an investigation into the affairs of the NSE under Ramkrishna revealed something more sinistera .
She had been providing him masses of information including the NSE’s five year projections, financial data, dividend ratio, business plans, agenda of board meetings and also consulted him on employee annual appraisals.
The 190-page final order handed down by Sebi’s whole-time member Ananta Barua uncovers a sordid tale of voodoo-like manipulation of the boss of one of the largest bourses in the world. The NSE is the largest derivative exchange in the world in terms of contracts traded, second largest derivatives exchange in the world in terms of currency futures traded and the fourth largest exchange in the world in the capital market cash segment. It has a combined market capitalisation of Rs 2,02,95,813 crore.
Ramkrishna – who was the MD & CEO of NSE from April 2013 to December 2016 – informed investigators that this “spiritual force” had been guiding her actions for over 20 years in personal and professional matters.
In a response to questions, Ramkrishna had said this spiritual manifestation had “spiritual powers do not require them to have any such physical co-ordinates and would manifest at will”. The spiritual person communicated with her through an email ID: rigyajursama@outlook.com.
The situation become even more bizarre when the investigation revealed that this “spiritual person” was the reason why a mid-level official at one of Balmer Lawrie’s subsidiary in Calcutta – Anand Subramanian – suddenly surfaced at Sebi and became Ramkrishna’s principal advisor between April 2015 and October 2016, just before she resigned from NSE.
The order said: “Noticee no. 1 (Ramkrishna) regards Noticee no. 6 (Subramanian) as to be like her spiritual guru whom she has revered and relied upon for the past 20 years”.
Subramanian was VP-Leasing & Repair Services at Transafe Services Ltd, a subsidiary of Balmer & Lawrie, earning a salary of less than Rs 15 lakh per annum — and he had “zero exposure to the capital markets”. His fortunes changed dramatically in April 2013 when Ramkrishna offered him the role of a part-time consultant working four days a week at a salary of Rs 1.68 crore. He rapelled up quickly emerging as a chief strategic advisor and received an annual compensation of Rs 4.21 crore within a matter of three years.
The post of consultant had never been advertised; there was no record of his interview and there were no employment records with the bourse’s HR department.
By August 2015, Subramanian was attending all board meetings of the NSE. In June 2016, he was authorised to form a subsidiary of NSE to set up a stock exchange at the International Financial Services Centre at GIFT City – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project which is being implemented with a lot of fanfare. Soon all the functional heads were reporting to Subramanian who was re-designated as group operating officer and advisor to the MD and CEO.
Barua said in his order that he doesn’t believe the allegation that Subramanian was the person behind the “unknown person’s” email ID.
“However.. I find that Subramanian was also an accomplice with the unknown person who influenced the decision of Ramkrishna and thereby benefitting himself by being re-designated as ‘Group Operating Officer and Advisor to MD’ and having the compensation being paid to him increase substantially each year, upon the advice of the unknown person to Ramkrishna. This is evident from the fact that Subramanian was also a recipient to most of the emails between Ramkrishna and the unknown person,” Barua said in his order.
The investigation says several influential people at the bourse including Ravi Narain – Ramkrishnan’s predecessor – were aware of this mysterious yogi and his communications with the NSE boss. Narain was MD of the bourse from April 1994 to March 2013. Later, he became the vice-chairman of NSE and remained in that position till June 2017.
The NSE board and the other noticees named in the order – president and company secretary J. Ravichandran, and chief regulatory officer V.R. Narasimhan – also knew about the dark truths surrounding this unknown spiritual person but took a “conscious decision…not to report the matter to Sebi and (chose to)…keep the matter under wraps.”
The market regulator has imposed a fine of Rs 3 crore on Ramkrishna, Rs 2 crore each on NSE, Ravi Narain and Subramanian, and Rs 6 lakh on V.R. Narasimhan.
Further, Ramkrishna and Subramanian have been restrained from associating with any market infrastructure institution or any intermediary registered with Sebi for three years. A similar restriction has been slapped on Narain for two years.
When Ramkrishna resigned in December 2016, the bourse had permitted an excess leave encashment of Rs 1.54 crore and granted her a deferred bonus of Rs 2.83 crore. NSE has now been ordered to forfeit the entire sum and deposit the amount in the Investor Protection Fund Trust within six days.
The order also bars the NSE from launching any new product for a period of six months.
