Satyam scam may be of over Rs 9,600 cr: CBI

22 Mar 2009, PTI

NEW DELHI: Its probe into the accounting fraud in Satyam Computer has given CBI enough reason to believe that the scam involves a much bigger amount, close to Rs 10,000 crore, than what was disclosed by the IT company's founder Ramalinga Raju, who is now awaiting trial.

Sources said the agency has retrieved over 7,000 fake invoices and forged documents showing fixed deposits and bank balances and their evaluation shows that the size of the scam is over Rs 9,600 crore, much more than the Rs 7,800 crore disclosed by Raju on January 7.

They said the investigating agency during the probe found that the accused relied heavily on technology to generate nearly 7,000 fake invoices to the tune of Rs 4,500 crore and fed the same into Satyam's books.

The sources said these inflated figures were also reflected in the balance sheet in the form of audit reports which helped the company to cheat the public who were purchasing its shares.

The buck did not stop here as the accused also have given false and fabricated statements, found by the CBI, about high capital of the company.

The accused forged documents and created fake fixed deposit receipts to the tune of Rs 3,300 crore.

The FDRs were shown by the accused as available deposits by the company, the sources said, adding the accused had also allegedly manipulated the bank guarantees to show the balance in bank accounts as Rs 1,800 crore.


The CBI alleged that the accused had forged bank documents showing the existence of the cash balance in five banks including ICICI Bank, HSBC, Citibank and BNP Paribas but the banks clarified that they do not have any cash balance in the name of the firm.

CBI is at present questioning the disgraced former chairman of Satyam, B Ramalinga Raju, and others including the auditors of PriceWaterhouse. Their custody was handed over to the CBI yesterday for two days.

Besides Raju, his brother Rama Raju, Satyam's former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, PW partners S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas are in jail awaiting trial in connection with the case dubbed as India's biggest corporate fraud.

In a related development, the CBI was examining the "digital evidence" about the share transactions at National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange and did not rule out the possibility of questioning some officials of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the capital market regulator. Sebi too is independently probing the fraud.