The party alleges that Jane Street, an American algorithm trading firm, entered into Indian market and looted unsuspecting small investors for five continuous years
NEW DELHI – The Congress has put Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the dock over the Jane Street mega financial scam which has caused a humongous loss of at least Rs 44,000 crores to small Indian investors. All this money has been transferred to the United States, the party said.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here on Tuesday, party spokesperson and Chairperson of the Social and Digital Media platforms, Ms Supriya Shrinate, revealed how Jane Street, 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 disclosed that from the SEBI’s own findings, Jane Street made a humongous profit of Rs 44,000 crores between January 2023 and March 2025 and repatriated all that money to the US. She said the total profits must be much more than this amount, as these were the profits for just a two-year period, while Jane Street has been doing business in India for almost five years.
She wondered how such a huge amount was allowed to be taken out of the country. She questioned the investigating agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income Tax, asking them whether they were sleeping all this time.
Ms Shrinate noted that the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, had repeatedly been 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 Modi and Home Minister Shah for being self-appointed market gurus, and advising people to invest in stock markets after the 2024 general elections, the senior Congress leader asked why they did 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 continue trading till July.
Maintaining that the details about Jane Street’s working were in the public domain, she said that during a court hearing in the US, Jane Street had openly admitted that it was making huge profits in India because of the “inefficiencies” and still SEBI failed to take note of it.
Interestingly, she said, this was the same Madhvi Puri Buch era of the SEBI that saw many other such scandals.
Putting the prime minister, the home minister, the finance minister, the SEBI, and other institutions in the dock, she asked, what were all of them doing while Jane Street was robbing the Indian investors?
Ms Shrinate added that it was not for protecting the interests of the small investors that the SEBI has finally woken up, but only because the FII outflow figures skyrocketed and the government was forced to take note, when Jane Street had already repatriated almost all the profits to the US.
“The train has left the station and now SEBI and Modi govt are shamelessly rejoicing by impounding a meagre fraction of the huge money that’s already left India’s shores”, she said.
“There is no effort from 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 added.
