MCX-SX case: CBI to quiz Sebi chairman, former chief

The CBI will soon quiz Securities and Exchange Board of India chairman UK Sinha as well as former head of the regulatory body M Damodaran in connection with a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) to probe granting sanction to Jignesh Shah-founded Financial Technologies (India) and MCX-SX. The decision to quiz the duo was taken after examination of another former Sebi chief CB Bhave was done earlier this month in Bangalore during which the sleuths were told that public interest was involved in granting the licence to MCX-SX to trade in currency derivatives. 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, the CBI claimed that Damodaran had cleared the file of MCX-SX despite knowing that the Income-Tax department had carried out searches on Shah and 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 in 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, another former member KM Abraham and FTIL and MCX-SX, among others.