By Jayshree P Upadhyay
MUMBAI (Reuters) -Jane Street filed an appeal on Wednesday against India's markets regulator, seeking to compel it to release documents the U.S. high-frequency trading giant says are pertinent to rebut allegations of market manipulation, according to a case document reviewed by Reuters.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India on July 4 temporarily barred Jane Street from trading in the local securities market on allegations that it manipulated India's indexes, in one of the strongest
actions it has taken against a foreign investor.
In its filing on Wednesday with India's Securities Appellate Tribunal, the company accused the regulator of refusing it "full inspection of all relevant and relied upon material".
It said while it was inspecting some of the documents the regulator relied on, it came across an internal surveillance December 2024 report that had been unable to conclude manipulation by Jane Street entities in India's two key indexes.
"On the basis of available information at this juncture, it is proposed that the matter may not be pursued further," Jane Street quoted the SEBI's December 2024 report as saying.
"These documents are undeniably relevant," the company said in the filing.
Jane Street declined to comment in a reply to an email from Reuters. The Securities and Exchange Board of India did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The filing with the tribunal, the first point of appeal against regulatory orders, is a rare challenge by a major U.S. company against India's regulator.
It requests that the tribunal instruct SEBI to provide Jane Street with the missing materials, said a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
SEBI imposed a penalty of $567 million on Jane Street, which the company has deposited. While it can restart trading in India, it is still refraining from doing so, Reuters reported last month.
In its interim order in July, SEBI had said that Jane Street and related entities took positions in stocks underlying India's Bank Nifty index early in a trading session, while taking short positions in options linked to the index. It later sold the underlying stocks, making a loss on its cash positions, but made far larger gains on its derivative positions, SEBI alleged.
Jane Street and related entities traded in volumes heavy enough to move the index, SEBI's order said.
(Reporting by Jayshree P Upadhyay; Editing by Louise Heavens and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
