Satyam trial: 100 witnesses depose before special court

Ever since the trial in the Satyam Computer Services fraud case began on November 8, 2010, close to 100 witnesses have deposed before the special court. The court, which has marked about 2,500 documents, is yet to examine 300 more witnesses. The Supreme Court had asked the special court dealing with the case to complete the trial by July 31, 2011.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had initially listed 697 witnesses, but had pruned it by about 300. The CBI had then indicated 3,067 documents, but then condensed these.

Yesterday, during the cross examination of a senior-level Satyam employee, he was asked whether he was responsible for developing, testing and maintaining some applications at the company. The employee said he had no access to network and system data of the corporate services department. The prosecution, showing a set of documents, then asked him if he could specify who had generated the invoices and from which system. To this, the Satyam official responded that it could not be ascertained as to which invoice was raised by whom, and from which computer.

The CBI had, in its chargesheet, said Satyam generated 74,625 invoices in the Invoice Management System and of these 7,561 invoices were false documents. These invoices showed that business worth Rs 5,117 crore was generated without actually securing business for the company.

The CBI said it had conducted several validations with regard to the authenticity of these invoices, including confirmations from Satyam’s finance-in-charges, associates, back tracking reports and others.

The CBI had also charged the accused with inflating sales and the debtor posi-tion and offloading of shares by them and other promoters.