Jane Street case: Ex-Sebi chief Madhabi Buch denies regulatory failures

Mumbai: Former Sebi chief Madhabi Puri Buch has come out strongly against those pointing fingers at the regulator in the Jane Street market manipulation case, indicating it was a regulatory failure due to which US-based algo trading major Jane Street thrived with its alleged illegal acts for years.

On Tuesday, Puri Buch issued a statement saying it was in April 2024 (when she was at the helm) that Sebi had formed a team of officials from various departments and started looking into Jane Street's affairs.

The statement by Puri Buch came on the day Jane Street told its employees that Sebi had "many erroneous or unsupported assertions" about its trading activity in the country and it would "defend itself against the accusations".

The trading firm said it strongly rejected "the premise and substance of (Sebi's) order", and said the markets regulator was "fundamentally mistaken" about its trades, reports noted. Jane Street also said its trading activities were "unambiguously good for the health of financial markets".

On her part, Puri Buch, through a one-page statement, said that the "identification of index manipulation by Jane Street and initiation of numerous actions (by the regulator), including a cease & desist instruction, were carried out by Sebi between April 2024 and Feb 2025." Puri Buch left her office on February 28, 2025 after completing her three-year term.

On July 3, that is more than a year after it started investigating Jane Street's affairs in India, Sebi banned the US-based algo trading major and three of its arms from the Indian market. Sebi also asked Jane Street to disgorge nearly Rs 4,850 crore that it sees as ill-gotten profit.

In her statement, the former Sebi chief said that some entities in the market were trying to "create a false narrative by implying that there was regulatory failure by Sebi in the (Jane Street) matter during that period and attributing false motives for the same". " Right from April 2024, Sebi was seized of the matter relating to the Jane Street group and took numerous steps to examine and investigate the extremely complex structures and strategies deployed by them and to verify and analyse the data."

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