Court defers Satyam Computer case verdict to 9 April
09 Mar 2015
The special court set up in Hyderabad to hear the case of the multi-crore rupee accounting fraud at the erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Ltd today deferred its judgement to 9 April, citing the sheer volume of the documents as well as a lawyers' strike in the city.
The verdict was earlier slated for today.
"Even if you (all the accused) are not able to bring your advocates, the court will proceed with its judgement on 9 April. I am making it very clear," said judge B V L N Chakravarthi.
Trial in the case, considered the biggest corporate fraud to come to light in India, began on 8 November 2010 and was completed on 24 June 2014. The fraudulent accounting was worth Rs7,000 crore, causing Satyam investors to lose Rs14,000 crore.
During the course of the trial, the special court examined 216 witnesses and marked 3,038 documents. All the 10 accused, including former Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju, attended the court proceedings today.
Other accused in the case are his brother and the company's former managing director, B Rama Raju; former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas; former Price Waterhouse auditors S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri; B Suryanarayana Raju; former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam; and Satyam's former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta.
The scam came to light on 7 January 2009, after Ramalinga Raju confessed to manipulating the company's books and inflating profits.
On 16 December 2008, Satyam had announced its board's approval for acquiring 100-per cent stake in Maytas Properties for $1.3 billion, as well as 51 per cent in Maytas Infra for $300 million - the companies were promoted by Raju and his sons.
The Satyam management, however, called off the deal on 17 December 2008, after investors expressed outrage at the decision (See: Shareholder revolt forces Satyam to dump Maytas bid).
In a letter, Raju had admitted, ''The aborted Maytas deal was actually a last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones'' (Satyam's Raju admits to fraud and resigns).
Raju was arrested on 7 January 2009. In February that year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took charge of the probe and subsequently filed three charge-sheets. Later, the charge sheets were clubbed into one (Court orders CBI to club all three Satyam cases).
In its charge-sheet, the CBI had termed the Satyam case as India's biggest corporate fraud. It had said that the company's former chairman Ramalinga Raju and members of his family secured illegal gains to the tune of about Rs2,743 crore by various tricks.
''The fraud was perpetrated by inflating the revenue of the company through false sales invoices and showing corresponding gains by forging the bank statements with the connivance of the statutory and internal auditors of the company. The annual financial statements of the company with inflated revenue were published for several years and this lead to higher price of the scrip in the market. In the process, innocent investors were lured to invest in the company. Attempts were made to conceal the fraud by acquiring the companies of kith and kin,'' CBI had said.
Raju, along with others, were charged with offences under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 120B (criminal conspiracy), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471(using forged documents as genuine) and 477-A (falsification of accounts).
Currently, all the accused are out on bail. Raju, the prime accused, B Rama Raju and Srinivas Vadlamani were released on bail on 18 October 2012.
