Sebi imposes Rs 7-cr fine on NSE, Rs 5 cr each on Ramkrishna, Varanasi in ‘dark fibre’ case

Sebi imposes Rs 7-cr fine on NSE, Rs 5 cr each on Ramkrishna, Varanasi in ‘dark fibre’ case

Capital markets regulator Sebi has penalised total 18 entities, including National Stock Exchange (NSE) and its former chief Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Varanasi in the ‘dark fibre’ case. The regulator has imposed a penalty of Rs 7 crore on NSE and Rs 5 crore each on Ramkrishna and Varanasi. Besides, a fine of Rs 5 crore has been levied on Subramanian Anand.

Further, Sebi has slapped a fine of Rs 6 crore on Way2Wealth Brokers, Rs 5 crore on GKN Securities and Rs 3 crore on Sampark Infotainment.They have been asked to pay the total amount of penalty within 45 days, according to a Sebi order passed on Tuesday.The case relates to the alleged differential access given to certain broking firms in the form of ‘dark fibre’ at NSE, to connect across the colocation facilities before other members.

“W2W (Way2Wealth) and GKN, in collusion with the employees of NSE and Sampark made significant profit due to unfair latency advantage available with them,” Sebi said in its 186-page order. Others penalised by Sebi are Nagendra Kumar SRVS, Deviprasad Singh, and MR Shashibhushan, Prashanth D’souza, Om Prakash Gupta, Sonali Gupta, Rahul Gupta, Netaji Patil, Rima Srivastava, Parshant Mittal, Mohit Mutreja.