The Name is Shah…Jignesh Shah
A Genius, fraud, entrepreneur, conman, billionaire, prisoner these are just a few names of Mr. Jignesh shah, the man whose life has become a success story turn nightmare. The software engineer turned businessman, in the year 1995, with just 5 lakh rupees started the company Financial Technologies which later went on to become the holding company of NSEL and the reason for both his rise and fall.
Jignesh shah was born to a well-to-do family with a settled conventional family business but since childhood Jignesh was sure of not joining his family’s business but instead wanted to become an engineer, work abroad for some time then come back to India and set up a business here. He had a lot of passion for both technology and money. The latter is evident from his interview years back in which he said that he wanted to become a billionaire by the age of 40. He reached there one year later with a net worth of 1.2 billion dollars at the age of 41. Shah completed his engineering and joined the Bombay stock exchange at the age of 23 as a network engineer. It was here that he was introduced to the concepts of Stock market and financial management. He has admitted that he did not have any knowledge about finance prior to joining BSE. The idea of commodity trading over the internet also took birth in BSE while working on a project. Jignesh was lucky to have achieved a lot of success in a very short span of time. This impacted his lifestyle in a major way. He was soon spotted in big parties with equally big personality. This led to his contacts with influential people which later on helped him in hiding the NSEL Scam. He was always an outstanding student and has said many a times in his interview that he is a voracious reader and love reading autobiographies of entrepreneurs.
Jignesh Shah fell into the trap of his own bottle neck ambition. Was it his greed that led to such consequences, or was it the pressure from the investors that influenced his decisions. Whatever the truth maybe, the shear brilliance of the man cannot be taken away from him. Let us now take a look at the major achievements in his life.

FTIL
FTIL stands for Financial Technologies. This company fully illustrates the kind of love Jignesh has for technology and money. It was started in the year 1995 by Jignesh shah and since then has been the prime reasons for his success. It was the lead promoter of the NSEL and so it did face a flurry of questions and acquisitions. FTIL has been acquitted of all the changes and despite of being the major share-holder in NSEL, it has been allowed to continue business.

MCX:
In the year 2003, Shah started Multi commodity exchange of India (MCX) which became an instant hit. In the year 2009, MCX had a turnover of 1.24 trillion US dollars and was ranked 6th in number of transactions made. MCX’s main focus was on metals where as other exchanges still targeted agricultural products. It has become the largest commodity exchange of India and seeing the success of the electronic commodity exchange system, Shah went on to open exchanges all around the world in countries such as Singapore, Dubai, Bahrain etc. MCX is the biggest competitor of the Bombay Stock Exchange and is the only listed Exchange of India.
After the NSEL scam came to light, questions were naturally asked to MCX. However a clean chit has been given to MCX and it is not found to be linked with FTIL and NSEL and still continues to be listed as a bourse. However Shah has been declared unfit to run an exchange like MCX after another big exchange of his, the National Spot Exchange limited , defaulted in 2013 and hence he has stepped down from the post of CEO.
NSEL
It was in the 2005 when the National Spot Exchange Ltd was established in Mumbai. 2008. The intent of this electronic spot exchange was to transform the rural economy by making farmers/sellers and processors/exporters/traders to meet and exchange commodities from remote areas with the help of computers. Most of the shares of NSEL were owned by FTIL having 99.99% ownership of the share capital. NSEL, too, like most other ventures of Shah, did very well in the beginning but sadly NSEL was not as clean from inside as it seemed from outside. The brains running the show took advantage of the fact that there was no regulatory body dedicated specifically for online commodity trading and hence the rules and guidelines were confusing and ambiguous at times. The technicalities of the scam ,how the RS 5600 cr scam stayed unnoticed for so long ?and where did the money go after all?, all these questions will be covered in the subsequent segments of this assignment.

The Brokers:
Until now, all the blame of the scam had been put on the promoters and management of NSEL. However recent developments in the case have brought light to the fact that brokers too played a big role in this scam. The brokers manipulated and played with the system in a big way. They allegedly sent false and crafted information to the investors and the auditors of the NSEL itself. These companies also gave assurances to the investors that there is no risk involved in commodity trading and fabricated documents to the auditor stating the physical availability of the commodities in the inventory. The EOW (Economic Offences Wing), in the wake of such revelations arrested three of the top brokers involved- Mr. Amit Rathi Director of ARCL, The director of Geofin commodities and Chintan Modi, the director of India Infoline Commodities Ltd.
The Regulators:
The FMC ie the Forwards market commission is the Govt body that was supposed to regulate the working of NSEL. The smell of conspiracy had been coming from a long time but no action had been taken. It was only with the arrival of new FMC chief, Ramesh Agarwal, that the scam unraveled. But what about the people heading the body before him? All these asnwers will be covered in the subsequent sections of this report. Also what lies ahead for both Jignesh and his companies will be discussed in detail.