Special court to pronounce judgment on Satyam case on March 9

The scam came to light on January 7, 2009, after Ramalinga Raju allegedly confessed to manipulating his company's account books

A special court here has said it will pronounce a verdict on the multi-crore accounting fraud in erstwhile Satyam Computer Services on March 9 next year.

“You know the volume of the case. It requires some more time. You might be satisfied or not (with the outcome), but I must satisfy myself. Typing of the judgment will take two to three weeks,” said judge B V L N Chakravarthi of the special court.

Trial in the case, touted as the biggest accounting fraud in India, began on November 8, 2010 and was completed on June 24 this year. During the course of the trial, the special court examined 216 witnesses and marked 3,038 documents. On October 20, the court had said it would announce a verdict on December 23. All the 10 accused, including former Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju attended the court proceedings on Tuesday.

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 VS Prabhakar Gupta.

The scam came to light on January 7, 2009, after Ramalinga Raju confessed to manipulating the company’s account books and inflating profits over to the tune of several crores.

On December 16, 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 December 17, 2008, after investors expressed outrage at the decision. In a letter, Raju had said, “The aborted Maytas deal was actually a last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones.”

Raju was arrested on January 7, 2009. In February that year, the Central Bureau of Investigation took charge of the probe and filed three charge sheets (on April 7, 2009, November 24, 2009 and January 7, 2010). Later, the charge sheets were clubbed into one.

Raju, along with others, were charged with offences such as cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and breach of trust, under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Currently, all the accused are out on bail. Raju, the prime accused, B Rama Raju and Srinivas Vadlamani were released on bail on October 18, 2012.