March 22: The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the apex body of the Income Tax department, has asked Mahindra Satyam to pay Rs 616 crore in taxes after rejecting the company’s plea to calculate its tax liability on the basis of restated accounts.

Disputing the tax body’s claim, the company moved the AP High Court on Tuesday seeking a stay on the tax demand. The court is to take up the case on Friday. More than a year ago, the I-T department had issued a notice after it found that under the R. Raju-led management, the IT firm had forged foreign tax certificates worth `345 crore to claim tax exemption.

The Mahindra Satyam chairman, Mr Vineet Nayyar, said the company has asked for the finance ministry’s intervention. “How they worked it out, as I say, is ‘mysterious ways of God’. They say that the Rs 345 crore was the foreign tax credit which Satyam had claimed. But, the company never had any income...” he said.