ED names Jignesh Shah, Massey, 66 others in NSEL case charge sheet

Mumbai

FTIL founder Jignesh Shah, MCX-SX’s Joseph Massey and former NSEL CEO Anjani Sinha are among 68 accused named in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) charge sheet in the National Spot Exchange Limited scam case.

Officials said in the over 20,000-page prosecution complaint, the agency has chronicled how the Rs 5,600 crore payment crisis scam was perpetrated.

The agency, sources said, has named Shah, chairman and managing director of Financial Technologies; Massey, MD and CEO of MCX Stock Exchange; Sinha and a number of other officials who were instrumental in the running of the bourse along with various defaulting firms.

The central probe agency has also included the list of attachments of assets it had made during the course of investigation explaining how NSEL funds were laundered and “illegally plouged into purchase private properties”.

“The agency has filed the charge sheet today and has sought a trial in the case now. A supplementary charge sheet could be expected,” a source said.

The charge sheet, sources said, has also explained the criminal conspiracy undertaken by the people at the helm and in the middle-rung of the NSEL that led to the cheating of depositors and creation of “tainted” assets.

It registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in 2013 to probe the case along with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police.

NSEL’s payment troubles started after it was ordered by regulator Forward Markets Commission (FMC) in July 2013 to suspend spot trade in most of its contracts due to suspected trading violations. The exchange could not settle the outstanding trades, sparking investigations by the police and regulators to find out whether the exchange had defrauded traders by not enforcing rules requiring sufficient collateral to be set aside.

Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL) blamed NSEL executives and the trading parties for the default. There were 24 members who defaulted payment to about 13,000 investors.

FTIL owns 99.9 per cent of NSEL, which has suspended all trading operations since the payment shortages.

PTI