CBI files supplementary chargesheet in Satyam scam

Satyam Computer Services’ founder-chairman Ramalinga Raju and his aides forged board resolutions and unauthorisedly got loans/advances of Rs 1,220 crore in the name of Satyam Computers from banks but this is not reflected in the accounting books, according to the supplementary chargesheet the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed on Tuesday.

The 200-page supplementary cited 1,549 additional documents, 301 more witnesses and nine material objects. The CBI filed the first chargesheet on April 7.

The supplementary chargesheet includes V S Prabhakar Gupta, global head (internal audit) of Satyam Computers, arrested on November 21 and sent to judicial remand, as an accused, in addition to the earlier nine, which include the Raju brothers, former chief financial officer V Srinivas, PriceWaterhouse auditors Srinivas Talluri and S Gopalakrishnan, and four others.

CBI deputy inspector general Lakshminarayana told the media that the accused generated fake invoices against fake customers to inflate revenues to the tune of Rs 430 crore.

The Raju brothers and the former CFO resorted to criminal breach of trust and falsified the accounts in the matter pertaining to acquisition of shares of Nipuna Services, a Rs 180 crore affair, he added.

CBI said Gupta resorted to willful suppression of auditing irregularities. The accused have resorted to criminal breach of trust in declaration and disbursement of dividends to the tune of Rs 230 crore.

The investigating agency also said it found evidence against the two PW auditors in the accounting fraud.

The CBI has quantified the evidence about the wrongful gains made by the accused and the losses suffered by the investors during the fraud period. “The investors must have lost about Rs 14,000 crore. The company understated liabilities. It did not reflect the Rs 1,220 crore loan it took from banks in the account books. This is in addition to the Rs 1,230 crore that Ramalinga Raju said he had arranged for the company but had not recorded in the company books,’’ the CBI DIG said.