Continuing its crackdown against entities allegedly involved in a front-running scam using messaging app Telegram, Sebi on Thursday carried out search and seizure operations at the premises of eight entities in multiple locations across the country. Overall, extreme levels of fear in the market seems to have morphed into something more resembling concern. For example, the Cboe Volatility Index fell from its 2022 peak of 36, which it hit Monday, to around 30 on Friday, a sign of easing tensions. Meanwhile, while the price of WTI crude oil slipped from Sunday’s multiyear high $130 of barrel to $109 a pop. Markets have been expecting heavy restrictions on Russian oil, some of which the U.S. has already imposed, and that would reduce the global supply and bring about even more burdensome inflation. Following this, Sebi, in an order passed in January 2022, established that the administrators of a Telegram channel having a large subscriber base enticed the subscribers to act upon recommendations that were circulated by those administrators on the channel, leading to significant price and volume impact in various scrips. These entities are reportedly operating nine Telegram channels with more than five million subscribers to whom they were making recommendations on selected listed scrips. Such recommendations induced the investors to deal in the said scrips, thereby creating artificial volume and price rise. Now safely in France with his spouse and three of his children, Kliuchnikov scrolls through Telegram to learn about the devastation happening in his home country.
from cn
