A decade old case was resolved by former National Stock Exchange (NSE) chief Vikram Limaye and eight others with market regulator SEBI for alleged bypass of trading access point (TAP) system by certain brokers with payment of Rs 643 crore settlement.
The former NSE top management executives including managing director and CEO VIkram Limaye, Umesh Jain, G. M. Shenoy, Narayan Neelakantan, V. R. Narasimhan, Kamala K, Nilesh Tinaikar, R Nandakumar and Mayur Sindhwad were also ordered to do pro bono community service of at least 14 days in the current financial year.
“The panel of Whole Time Members accepted the recommendations of the High Powered Advisory Committee to settle the case on composite payment by NSE for an amount of Rs 643 crore,” reads the settlement order passed by SEBU whole-time member Ashwani Bhatia.
Last month SEBI had dropped charges against NSE and its seven former executives, including Chitra Ramkrishna, Ravi Narain, and Anand Subramanian, in the co-location case, citing an absence of evidence to support the allegations.
“The resolution of key legal proceedings will help NSE push ahead with its initial public offering (IPO). The exchange has applied for a no-objection certificate (NOC) with the market regulator for approval to file IPO documents,” said a senior NSE official.
The former NSE managing director and chief executive officer Vikram Limaye and eight others agreed to pay Rs 643 crore to settle alleged TAP misuse case with the market regulator after show cause notice last February to the exchange for failure to take remedial steps to stop brokers from bypassing systems.
The software application TAP deployed by NSE was launched in 2008 and used by stock brokers to establish communication of orders and trades.
The exchange had introduced 'Direct Connect' as an alternative to TAP in 2016 but continued use of the old system until September 2019 for the equity segment.
