NEW DELHI: The CBI is likely to soon examine Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) chairman U K Sinha as well as former head of the regulatory body M Damodaran in connection with the preliminary enquiry (PE) to probe granting sanction to Jignesh Shah-founded Financial Technologies (India) Ltd and MCX-SX.
The decision to quiz the duo was taken after examination of another former Sebi chief C B Bhave earlier this month during which the agency was told that public interest was involved in granting licence to MCX-SX to trade in currency derivatives, sources said.
Bhave, a 1975 batch IAS officer from Maharashtra, also made it clear that there was no undue pecuniary benefit to Jignesh Shah entities as a result of this decision. During the probe, CBI claimed Damodaran had cleared the MCX-SX file despite knowing that the income tax department had carried out searches on Shah and he under investigation of the tax department.
The former Sebi chief has, however, claimed that the report about income tax searches reached him later.
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 Sebi. The approval for full-fledged stock exchange came during the tenure of Sinha, who took charge of Sebi on February 2011. He got an extension of two years in February.
Bhave was examined by a team of CBI officers two months after the agency registered a PE against him, former member K M Abraham and FTIL and MCX-SX, among others. He denied any quid pro quo as alleged by CBI for grant of permission.
Bhave was made Sebi chairman in February 2008 and his three-year term ended in February 2011. Abraham’s term as a whole-time member of Sebi also ended in 2011.