Ramalinga Raju & Nine Others Jailed In India’s Biggest Corporate Fraud Case: Satyam Computer’s Scam

In January 2009 India saw one of the biggest scam ever, the Satyam Computers Scam. Ramalinga Raju the Chairman of Satyam Computers was the main accused in the scam. Matyas, nothing but only Satyam if we read it from right to left which was an infrastructure company incorporated by Raju’s sons. It all came into light during the merger of Matyas and Satyam where an IT company will bid for the shares of an infrastructure company and the investors had strong reservations for the same. With the rising concerns over investors Ramalinga Raju decided to achieve a target of $12 billion of turnover of Satyam by 2012 and all the finances of the company was kept at bay from the board and the executive members of the company. Satyam’s net assets was valued to be Rs. 36,000 crore in 2008 whereas after the scam the Rs. 542 per share went to Rs. 58 per share and Satyam was acquired by Tech Mahindra for Rs. 5600 crore. It was only when Ramalinga Raju confessed to the irregularity in January 2009 that Rs. 8000 crore was used to buy two infrastructure company owned by his sons, including Matyas. A huge workforce of nearly 100 experts in the field and it took over two years to assess the damage by the scam. Raju has faked documents showing about 13,000 more employees and all the salaries drawn for these non-existent employees were pocketed into his account and more to it he faked the company’s official invoices creating fake revenue amounting to Rs. 5117 crore and cash worth Rs. 3983 crore. The scam amounted to a humungous Rs 7900 crore. Government taking charge of the working of Satyam which was one of the leading IT Company in the country, appointed Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC as the Chairman of Satyam; Kiran Karnaik of NASSCOM and C Achuthan of SEBI as members. The case was taken up by CBCID Hyderabad but the investigation was transferred to CBI Hyderabad on orders of Government of Andhra Pradesh and Department of Personnel & Training because of the quantum of the amount involved in the scam.  The accused in the case were framed with charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy breach of trust, forgery, inflating invoices, illegal profits, faking accounts in effect violating multiple income tax provisions under the statute. A special Trial Court XXI ACMM Court was constituted on 8^th of November 2010 which delivered the judgement convicting Ramalinga Raju and nine others on 9^th April, 2015 sentencing Raju for seven years in jail and fine of Rs 5.5 crore. Raju’s brother who was also one of the main accused is also jailed and fined Rs.5.5 crore and eight other convicted have been imprisoned and fined which vary from Rs. 27-34 Lakh. The final charge-sheet submitted was about 55,000 pages and 3137 documents market as material exhibits along with 226 Prosecution witnesses were examined over all these years. Ramalinga Raju on 13^th April, 2015 filed an appeal challenging the Judgement delivered by the Special Court in Session’s Court under Section 374 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.