New Delhi, July 8 (UNI) The Congress today put the Central government and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the dock over the Jane Street mega financial scam, alleging that it has caused a humongous loss of, at least, Rs 44,000 crores to small Indian investors.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate alleged, “An American algorithm trading firm entered into Indian market and looted unsuspecting small investors for five continuous years while the SEBI and all other regulatory institutions remained in deep slumber.”
She said that from the SEBI’s own findings, Jane Street made a humongous profit of Rs 44,000 crore between January 2023 and March 2025 and repatriated all that money to the US.
She claimed, the total profits must be much more than this amount as these were the profits for just two-year period, while Jane Street has been doing business in India for almost five years.
Expressing disbelief, she questioned how such a massive sum was permitted to be transferred out of the country.
She also raised concerns about the silence and inaction of investigative agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income-Tax Department.
Ms Shrinate said that Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had been repeatedly and regularly cautioning the government about protecting the interests of the small investors in the F&O market, and still “institutions like SEBI and the NSE, which are supposed to watch their interests, were caught napping”.
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for being “self-appointed market gurus”, for advising people to invest in stock markets after the 2024 General Elections, the senior Congress leader asked them, why did they not caution the investors?
Pointing towards the gross negligence by SEBI, she said, five months ago it had issued a “mild warning” to Jane Street but did not take any action and allowed it to trade till July.
Claiming that the details about Jane Street’s working were in public domain, she said that Jane Street during a court hearing in the US had openly admitted that it had been making huge profits in India because of the “inefficienciencies” here and still SEBI failed to take note.
She said interestingly, this was the same Madhvi Puri-Buch era of the SEBI that saw many other such scandals.
Holding the PM, the HM, the FM, the SEBI and other institutions in the dock, she asked, what were all of them doing while Jane Street was robbing the Indian investors.
She asked, “who allowed Jane Street to repatriate such a huge amount of money to the US and how does the government of India plan to get this money back.”
“There is no effort made by regulators, like SEBI, to ring fence small players, which is what it should be primarily doing. This negligence is despite multiple warnings and red flags,” she claimed.
