Sebi restrains 2 Infosys, Wipro employees from securities market

Markets regulator Sebi has restrained an Infosys employee and his connected person, who is an employee of Wipro Ltd, from the securities market till further orders in a matter related to alleged insider trading in Infosys shares.

The market regulator has also directed impounding of illegal proceeds of Rs 2.62 crore, according to a Sebi order dated September 27.

The alert system of Sebi had generated insider trading alerts for Infosys' scrip around the corporate announcement about the strategic partnership of Infosys with Vanguard.

The information related to the deal was UPSI and the UPSI period was from June 29, 2020 to July 14, 2020.

Ramit Chaudhri, solution design head of Infosys, who was directly/ indirectly associated with the Vanguard deal is a connected person and was reasonably expected to have access to the UPSI and on preponderance of probability basis prima facie he was in possession of the UPSI.

Keyur Maniar who is currently working as senior VP and country head (MD) with Wipro, is connected to Ramit.

Keyur had traded in the scrip of Infosys in the F&O segment just prior to the announcement of the Vanguard deal and soon after the announcement, subsequently offloaded/squared off his positions such that net positions were zero.

Therefore, they prima facie violated Prohibition of Insider Trading norms. Proceeds of Rs 2,62,30,620 were generated  through the insider trading activities.

"Preventive directions against them are essential to stall the impending danger to investors that in future Ramit and Keyur through their personal, social and corporate network might procure/communicate/misutilise UPSI pertaining to various companies including but not limited to INFY and Wipro; and might continue to engage in similar modus operandi by playing varying roles in various other companies," Sebi said.

Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters