The Joint Parliament Committee report on the stock market scam, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, concluded that Ketan Parekh emerged as a key player in the scam and received large sums of money from banks as well as corporate bodies during the period when the Sensex crashed in March last year.

"There was a nexus between Ketan Parekh, banks and the corporate houses," said the report, which was presented in the Lok Sabha by JPC chairman Prakash Mani Tripathi.

The committee recommended that this nexus should be further investigated by either Securities and Exchange Board of India or by the Department of Company Affairs while observing that the scam was the result of manipulation of the capital market to benefit market operators, brokers, corporate entities and their promoters and management.

Accussing Sebi, Reserve Bank of India and the ministry of finance of "waking up late and throughout adopting a lenient attitude", the report observed, "As soon as the committee began its sittings and searching questions were asked, Sebi, RBI and other regulatory authorities including the ministry of finance went into active mode.

Had this state of affairs prevailed after the (1992 Harshad Mehta scam) action taken report, the probability of the present scam would have been negligible."