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What the CBI “discovered” in the NSE co-location scam case included “deleted conversation records” and “illegal access to backup server.”
In August, the CBI filed an additional charge sheet in the case. Charge sheet details how OPG Securities owner 'bribed' NSE officials between 2010 and 2014 to give them an advantage over other brokers.
New Delhi: According to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is looking into the alleged manipulation of the bourse, the owner and promoters of OPG Securities, the Delhi-based brokerage firm at the centre of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location scam case, deleted important evidence including their chats and emails with NSE employees.
According to agency sources, Sanjay Gupta, the proprietor of OPG Securities and one of the main defendants in the case, and a co-defendant utilised a backup server intended for emergencies between 2010 and 2014 to gain “preferential access to NSE data,” giving them a competitive advantage over other brokers.
The software they used to connect to the server was allegedly developed by Aman Kokrady and Vivek Goenka, who were allegedly employed by Gupta, who was arrested in the case in June of this year.
These conclusions are detailed in the supplemental charge sheet that the CBI submitted on August 19th. In addition to Gupta, Kokrady, and Goenka, the charge sheet also names Chitra Ramkrishna, agency sources said, the former chief executive officer and managing director of the NSE, and data analyst Abhilasha Kukreja from OPG.
ThePrint attempted to contact OPG Securities via phone and email, but received no response prior to the publication of this report. Once a response is obtained, the report will be updated.
The CBI alleges in its charge sheet that between 2010 and 2014, OPG was given an unfair edge over other brokers who could only access NSE’s principal servers thanks to assistance from NSE’s data centre workers.
The backup servers, which were only for emergencies, had “zero load,” enabling better and faster access to the market feed, according to sources, which resulted in unjustified benefits for Gupta’s business.
According to a source who spoke with ThePrint, “OPG Securities had 24/7 access to the secondary server, which is normally a backup and intended only for emergencies, such as when the primary server dispensing data breaks down. However, since OPG was the only party connected with the secondary server, they got data faster due to the low load, giving them an unfair advantage. They had offered NSE staff bribes in exchange for this service.
The insider added that the investigators discovered that the corporation had erased numerous communication logs with NSE workers, which were all significant pieces of evidence in the case. The insider also said that some of the deleted material has been recovered from the devices taken during the probe.
The agency also discovered that OPG “stopped working that well” when the NSE switched from a “unicast server to a multicast server”.
A unicast server allows for the dissemination of information from a single source, whereas a multicast server allows for the dissemination of information from numerous sources.
