Psst! Fancy a bit of insider trading?

Insider trading has been around forever mostly because human beings just cannot keep their greed in check. Take for instance the developments in the US financial markets. A host of policy makers both in politics and finance have been privy to a lot of insider information, and their trading pattern has revealed that they have been trading, often just before the policy announcement dates! How convenient? To step out of harm’s way just in the nick of time. There have been several high-profile insider trading cases in the US involving big names such as Martha Stewart, Raj Rajaratnam, Rajat Gupta, etc.

Cut to India. The National Stock Exchange of India, which claims to be the third largest derivatives trading bourse in the world has been rocked by a mind-boggling expose. No less than the former MD and CEO of NSE, Chitra Ramkrishna, has been running the exchange purportedly with the ‘advice’ of a Guru, who resides in the Himalayan mountains!

I am copying in quotes here an excerpt from a detailed report in the Times of India, as on 19th February 2022: “According to Ramkrishna’s response to Securities & Exchance board of India(SEBI) order, the unknown person was her “spiritual guru” who guided her for the last 20 years. She described the person as “Himalayan Yogi”, “siddha-purusha”, who did not have physical coordinates and would “manifest at will”. However, the alleged “siddha-purusha” took interest in her hair, shared songs with her and even took a trip with her to Seychelles to “chill out”.

A lot of news and information is coming out via media continuously but one thing is certain that this “Guru” was none other than the former COO of the NSE, Mr. Anand Subramanian! It is early days yet but anyone can see that a lot of private inside information related to the NSE was revealed and exchanged via various communication channels including email, which could have been forwarded, leaked to numerous other folks with vested interests. Not a peep on this issue has come out on the media so far?!

Anyways, I will leave out the sordid details for you to hunt down on the internet on your own. For me, It throws up several questions especially relating to matters of Audit, compliance, whistleblowers, etc.

However, the saga just reinforces the fact that without checks and balances it only takes a couple of folks high up to blow up the entire corporate chain!

I sincerely hope that this expose, ensures tighter regulations, Audits and checks and balances to ensure that marquee financial institutions like Stock exchanges, banks and others are run in a squeaky-clean manner. In my opinion there is no place for leniency in such cases and the most stringent judicial punishments should be levied on those involved in this ridiculous scheme!