Illegal phone tapping: ED files money laundering case against Chitra Ramkrishna, Sanjay Panday

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday filed a money laundering case against former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey and former NSE top bosses Chitra Ramkrishna and Ravi Narain in connection with the illegal phone tapping case and the snooping case of employees of the stock exchange.

The law enforcement agency filed a case under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The ED filed a case against Chitra Ramkrishna, Ravi Narain and Sanjay Pandey a week after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked them.

In the recent FIR, the CBI had alleged that Ravi Narain and Chitra Ramkrishna had involved a company -- iSEC Services Pvt Ltd -- founded by the now retired Mumbai police commissioner Sanjay Pandey, to snoop on the stock market employees by illegally intercepting their phones calls.

The FIR also alleged that Sanjay Panday's company allegedly received a payment of ₹4.45 crore for illegal tapping the phones of the stock exchange employees. The phone tapping was camouflaged as "Periodic Study of Cyber Vulnerabilities" at the NSE, the FIR has said.

Not just the phone tapping, Sanjay Panday's company also provided transcripts of the taped conversations to senior management of the stock market, the FIR alleged.

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"...Top officials of NSE issued agreement and work orders in favour of said private company and illegally intercepted the phone calls of its employees by installing machines, in contravention of provisions under Indian Telegraph Act," the CBI said in a statement.

"No consent of the employees of NSE was also taken in this matter," it said.

The investigation agency had named Sanjay Pandey, his Delhi-based company, NSE's former MD and CEOs Narain and Ramkrishna, executive vice president Ravi Varanasi and head (premises) Mahesh Haldipur, among others, in the FIR.

The alleged irregularities of secret surveillance were found by the ED following which it reported it to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which asked the CBI to probe the charges.

The CBI on Friday, July 8, started a coordinated search operation in 18 cities after filing the FIR on a reference from the Union Home Ministry.

The interception was stopped in 2019, after the CBI started probing the NSE colocation scam in 2018.

(With PTI inputs)