CBI books case against Jignesh in MCX fraud

The CBI on Monday registered a case against Jignesh Shah, Sebi officials and former Sebi executive director J N Gupta for allegedly granting extension for MCX-SX and FTIL as private stock exchange illegally. The registration of the case came five months after the agency filed a preliminary enquiry.

Shah is already under the scanner of the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Maharashtra and other probe agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) since last year when the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), part of Financial Technologies (India) Limited group founded by him, faced a payment crisis.

 The size of the scam has been pegged at Rs 5,600 crore. MCX-SX was set up by FTIL and its commodity exchange arm MCX and began functioning as a full-fledged stock exchange last year after a prolonged battle with the Sebi.

Besides Shah and Gupta, the CBI has also named Sebi Executive Director S V Muralidhar Rao, Deputy General Manager Rajesh Dangeti and Assistant General Manager Vishakha More and companies FTIL and MCX with cheating, criminal conspiracy and abusing of official positions.

 More is a visually impaired officer who received the best employee award from President Pranab Mukherjee last year.

All of them have been charged under relevant sections of Prevention of Corruption Act also.Sources said More has been using two softwares, JAWS (Job Access With Speech) and OCRS (Optical Character Recognition Software), to read files and emails while her notes and markers are in Braille.

While the CBI has decided to close a case against former Sebi chairman C B Bhave and another ex-member K M Abraham in connection with grant of sanction to MCX-SX to function as a full-fledged private stock exchange, the agency has recommended "departmental action" against them.