Keyur Maniar, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, spent 14 years in Wipro and was senior vice president at the time of the alleged insider trading case.
Sebi found that there was a clear pattern in the buying and trading of Infosys shares by Maniar, which led to the prima facie evidence that it was a case of insider trading.
Records show that Maniar took exposure in call option contracts to buy around 670,000 Infosys shares between July 8 and July 14, 2020.
He took a long exposure to 15,600 shares of Infosys on July 8 alone.
Maniar slowly started accumulating options and futures of Infosys over the next seven days, taking exposure to as many as 360,000 shares on July 14, 2020, reaching 662,400 shares during the period. At that time, Infosys was trading at an average share price of Rs 783.
The price increased to Rs 825 per share after the announcement, when Maniar started squaring off the options and futures (in effect, offloading the shares), starting on July 15, 2020. About 330,000 shares were offloaded on July 15. About 310,000 shares were sold on July 16 and 18,000 on July 17, 2020 earning him Rs 2.61 crore.