Satyam scam verdict: Founder Ramalinga Raju found guilty, gets 7 years imprisonment
Hyderabad: A special court in Hyderabad on Thursday sentenced Satyam computers founder B. Ramalinga Raju and nine others to seven years in prison after they were found guilty by a special court in the Rs 7000-crore accounting fraud in erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Ltd (SCSL) that shook the corporate world six years ago.
Raju and his brother B Rama Raju have been fined Rs 5 crore each and the other 8 have been fined Rs 50 lakhs each by Special Judge B V L N Chakravarthi.
The 10 accused were convicted of criminal conspiracy and cheating among other offences in the scam dubbed as the country's biggest accounting fraud.
“The company head, Ramalinga Raju and members of his family secured illegal gains to the tune of about Rs 2,743 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 said in court today.
Read: Timeline of Satyam computers fraud case
The court cited the gravity of the case when convicts requested for the quantum of sentence be reduced. However, the court further said they could appeal against the judgement in the sessions court.
Once the poster boy of the IT industry, Byrraju Ramalinga Raju (60), and former employee G Ramakrishna were also found guilty under section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of IPC by the judge in the case probed by CBI.
Except Raju's another brother B Suryanarayana Raju and former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta, the other eight accused were found guilty under IPC sections 467, 468, 471 and 477A, relating to forgery of security, forgery for purpose of cheating and falsification of accounts, according to V Chandrashekhar, Superintendent of Police, CBI Hyderabad Zone.
While the accounting fraud was to the tune of Rs 7,000 crore, it had caused an estimated notional loss of Rs 14,000 crore to investors and unlawful gains of Rs 1,900 crore to Raju and others. Ramalinga Raju and his brother and Satyam's former Managing Director B Rama Raju were also found guilty under section 409 of IPC relating to criminal breach of trust.
All ten accused were present in the court, where media was not allowed, when the verdict was pronounced. After pronouncing the order, the judge directed the CBI to take all the convicts into custody. They will be shifted to the Cherlapally Central Prison.
Touted as the country's biggest accounting fraud, Satyam scam had come to light on January 7, 2009, after the firm's founder and then Chairman Ramalinga Raju allegedly confessed to manipulating his company's account books and inflating profits over many years.
Raju was arrested by Andhra Pradesh Police's Crime Investigation Department two days later after he allegedly confessed to the fraud, along with his brother Rama Raju and others.Read: Know Ramalinga Raju, the man convicted in Satyam fraud case
Around 3,000 documents were marked and 226 witnesses examined during the trial that began nearly six years ago.
Besides Raju, the nine others convicted in the case are his brother and Satyam's former managing director B Rama Raju, former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T Srinivas, Raju's another brother B Suryanarayana Raju, former employees G Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and Ch Srisailam and Satyam's former internal chief auditor VS Prabhakar Gupta.
Satyam was purchased by Mahindra & Mahindra owned company Tech Mahindra in April, 2009.
