HOW BIG IS THE NSE CO-LOCATION SCAM?

SCAMS are all about money. But in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) case, which first surfaced in 2015, nobody has a clue about the true extent of the alleged financial fraud.

- SUNITHA NATTI

Even six years after shocking revelations, it is unclear if investigators are anywhere close to cracking the crux of the case. Who are those foreign institutional investors and foreign portfolio investors, as they accessed the order book of the exchange hours before the market opening for over five years on the trot? and also the total amount of unlawful gains that traders made are still unclear.

While a public interest litigation filed by a journalist cited a Sebi-Technical Advisory Committee report that pegged the scam at ₹50,000 crore, Parliamentary member Arvind Ganpat Sawant in his question last year referred it as a ₹75,000 crore scam.

If the figure is anywhere close to either of the numbers mentioned above, this will perhaps be the biggest stock market scandal the country has ever seen.

Frustratingly, the penalties imposed by market regulator Sebi on various parties including NSE, its top management and brokers is coin change ranging from ₹1 crore to ₹15.6 crore, excluding interest. Worse, investigating agencies are yet to establish firm facts whether the world's largest derivatives exchange and its then management indulged in any intentional wrongdoing.