Finance dept, not HRD, managed Satyam payroll

17 Apr 2009, ET Bureau

HYDERABAD: The payroll at tainted Satyam Computer Services was managed entirely by its finance department, while the IT firm's human resources department only maintained the data base of its associates on SAP human resources network (SHINE).

Payroll was not run on SHINE, according to evidences provided to key investigating agencies probing the scam. These evidences are set to form the basis for the next phase of the investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), that is probing the recruitment process.

The role of Satyam's erstwhile finance team has come in the spotlight after the firm’s disgraced founder confessed to perpetrating the Rs 7,000-crore financial fraud. The CBI reckons that Raju began an aggressive recruitment of employees to justify the inflated revenues. The finance department connived with Raju to inflate sales by generating fake invoices in the invoice management system to show non-existent sales of Rs 5,117 crore. The average inflated sales was around 18%, according to the chargesheet filed by the CBI.

The agency has begun scrutinising the expenditure of Satyam to assess the quantum of money that went into paying salaries on bloated workforce.

Satyam has around 48,000 employees and investigating agencies have found validated this count. The HR department apparently had access control rights to SHINE, while the finance and a few other departments were able to view the data. The finance department was provided with information on addition of new associates, resignation of existing ones and changes in the pay structure. But the payroll was processed on a system that the finance department had developed independently.

A new associate had to open a bank account in a designated bank and the account number was shared with both the HR and the payroll.

The payroll was made by a statutory compliance team. But, doubts are being raised, if the details of employees, who quit the firm, were deleted from the payroll.