New Delhi: A Delhi Court on Wednesday sent Sanjay Pandey, former Mumbai Police commissioner to a 9-day ED remand in National Stock Exchange (NSE) co-location scam case. He was arrested yesterday by the agency in a money laundering case in alleged illegal phone tapping and snooping of employees of the stock exchange.
Special Judge Sunena Sharma on Wednesday ordered the ED remand for Sanjay Pandey till July 29, 2022. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday arrested former Mumbai Police Commissioner in the case.
During the arguments held before the court, Sanjay Pandey spoke to the judge directly and said he did not tap phone in the NSE.
“The project that ISEC was called analysis of recorded calls. We never did any tapping any live monitoring. We neither had equipment nor told to tap. Every recording was done by NSE. Machine installed in NSE and they are the ones who tapped. What is my culpability?” he said.
Advocate Aditya Wadhwa, appearing for Sanjay Pandey, submitted that the company carries out a forensic study of conversations that had been independently recorded by NSE. “I gave an analysis of the same. Call analysis is what I did for them,” Wadhwa said.
Pandey’s lawyer said work was of Periodic study of cyber vulnerabilities. “I would isolate suspicious calls. I am checking any suspicious calls within NSE,” he said.
Advocate Wadhwa also submitted on behalf of Pandey, “I was a capable public servant till June 30. I was handling the law and order situation of Mumbai as a police commissioner till then. Suddenly after my retirement, 2 FIRs have been registered against me in just 7 days. And now I am arrested. My arresting is clear a political vendetta”.
For ED, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju appeared and submitted that he (Pandey) resigned in April 2000, there was litigation between 2001-2006 during his service. VRS moved in 2007 and in October 2008 he withdrew that. He formed a company incorporated in 2001 when this was incorporated he was still in service even if he was not the director of the company he attended meetings. We have records defacto he was in control.
ED further submitted that the contract came in as a facade, 120-B is a predicate offence / criminal conspiracy held. MTNL lines were tapped. This company was a family concern and 4.54 crores was proceeds of crime.
Pandey was arrested under provisions of the Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after his day-long questioning at the agency’s headquarters here on July 19, 2022.
The agency’s move comes after it reportedly found enough evidence in the NSE co-location scam in which it wanted to know the role of an audit company, incorporated in 2001 by the retired Mumbai Police chief, for raising a red flag that the NSE servers were compromised. The compromise had allowed one of the trading companies to get unfair access to the system, resulting in windfall profits.
The case is already being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) since 2018.
It is alleged that the firm incorporated by Pandey was one of the IT companies tasked with conducting security audits at NSE from 2010 to 2015 when the co-location scam is believed to have taken place.
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