Sebi in an interim order passed on Monday banned Ramit Chaudhri, solutions design head of Infosys, and his accomplice Keyur Maniar of Wipro in an insider trading case involving the company’s strategic partnership with Vanguard announced last year.
The capital market regulator’s investigation found that Ramit Chaudhri had access to the unpublished price-sensitive information regarding the Vanguard deal. He then shared the same information with former colleague at Wipro BPS, Keyur Maniar.
“Keyur is a connected person and is reasonably expected to have an access to the UPSI and therefore, he is an insider and on a preponderance of probability basis prima facie was in possession of the UPSI procured from Ramit,” Sebi said.
Keyur had traded in the Infosys stock in the futures and options segment just prior to the company’s disclosure of the deal to the stock exchanges and earned proceeds of Rs 2.6 crore from the trade.
Such trading behaviour of Keyur was not his normal trading behavior because his trading concentration during the look back period, that is, May 20, 2020 to July 01, 2020 and look forward period of July 29, 2020 to September 09, 2020 was almost 0 per cent, Sebi said.
“Keyur has taken huge delta positions in the scrip of Infosys for a very short period of time, completely inconsistent with his historical risk taking pattern including even for the next highest delta scrip, and completely inconsistent to delta position in all other 92 scrips and squared off the delta positions in the scrip of Infosys immediately pursuant to the announcement,” the Sebi order said.
The market regulator has also impounded the bank accounts of Chaudhri and Keyur for the proceeds under investigation and ordered both to deposit the amount in an escrow account. The accused now have 21 days to raise an objection and request personal hearing with the regulator.
