A sprawling regulatory probe involving Schroders & Co’s Indian partner is shaking up one of the country’s largest asset managers. It is poised to shake up India’s $465 billion mutual fund industry.

Amid an ongoing internal investigation, Axis Asset Management Co, India’s seventh-largest mutual fund manager, fired two employees in May, including its chief dealer.

The fund filed its findings with regulators in early July and said it had evidence that the fired executives violated securities laws. Meanwhile, a person familiar with the agency’s investigation said the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had been conducting its probe into the men’s potential pre-emptive actions and asked not to be identified as discussing private information.

A front-running trade is a stock trade by someone with information on an upcoming block trade that will affect the price. It is illegal in India, and the market regulator has conducted extensive searches and seizures of the offices and homes of Axis Mutual Fund executives and other stockbrokers and traders, people familiar with the matter said. The regulator’s investigation covered 30 locations in different cities, the person said.

The pandemic-fuelled boom in India’s investment industry could make it harder for executives and regulators to manage the consequences of such excess growth, interviews with nine people familiar with the investigation suggest. British investment giant Schroders holds a 25% stake in Axis Asset Management, with Axis Bank Ltd holding the rest.