Morgan Stanley relationships across Wall Street snared in probe

Ever since his arrival after university in 2004, Pawan Passi has worked the phones inside Morgan Stanley, rising to become a chief communicator with investors buying and selling big blocks of stock, a business the bank dominates on Wall Street. 

Then in November, his chair suddenly went empty at Morgan Stanley’s headquarters overlooking Times Square, and the whispers began spreading. The bank had put Passi on leave. The feds were poking around.

Indeed, Morgan Stanley and Passi are intertwined in a sprawling US probe into whether bankers are improperly tipping off investors to stock sales large enough to send prices swinging, according