Final hearing of Satyam case to be held today

Hyderabad: The final hearing of the Satyam Computer Services Limited case will be held on Monday. The trial will also come to an end and the special court set up to try the case will probably fix a date for pronouncement of the verdict.

The Special Judge of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Nampally, will decide a date for the verdict. The scam came to light in 2009, after then chairman, B. Ramalinga Raju, confessed to manipulating his company’s account books and inflating profits over many years. Mr Raju and his brother had been arrested by the united Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department. The case was later taken up by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Mr Raju and others were charged with offences including cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and breach of trust under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. Mr Raju later retracted his confession statement and contended that all charges leveled by the CBI were false.

According to the CBI, the accounting fraud in Satyam was perpetrated over a period of 10 years, wherein Mr Raju and the other accused manipulated and fabricated records and projected revenues of the company which never existed.

It is alleged that the scam caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to Satyam shareholders.

Besides Mr Raju, his brother and Satyam’s former MD, B. Rama Raju, ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, Mr Raju’s another brother, B. Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G. Ramakrishna, D. Venkatpathi Raju and  Ch. Srisailam, and Satyam’s former internal chief auditor V.S. Prabhakar Gupta are the other accused in the case. At present, all 10 accused are out on bail.

At present, all the 10 accused, against whom the Enforcement Directorate also filed a chargesheet in October last year under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, are out on bail.