Complaint by Shareholder led to Sentencing in Satyam Case

Hyderabad: The 2009 multi-crore Satyam scam case started with a complaint filed by a shareholder, two days after founder of the erstwhile SCSL B Ramalinga Raju allegedly confessed to manipulating his company's account books and inflating profits over many years to the tune of crores.

On the basis of the complaint filed by Leena Mangat, a resident of Secunderabad, the CB-CID had filed an FIR on January 9, 2009 against Ramalinga Raju (Chairman), his brother B Rama Raju (MD) and other directors, auditors and others.

Ms Mangat, in her complaint, had said she invested her retirement benefits in purchasing the shares of the Satyam Computer Services Limited on seeing the performance of the company represented and reflected through the balance sheet with the belief and representations made by the Chairman, the Managing Director and other Directors of SCSL, to be true.

The complainant had then said she invested her hard earned money and purchased 100 shares of the SCSL about four years back for a total sum of Rs 19,000 and the value of the company's share was at around Rs 500 in the market then.

"That due to the fudging of the company accounts and manipulation of records showing incorrect inflated balance sheets by the Chairman, MD and other Directors of the company which were certified by the auditors, the value of the shares of the company suddenly dropped causing huge financial loss to the complainant and other shareholders," she had said in the complaint.

The depreciation in the value of the shares is due to "dishonest and fraudulent acts" committed by the functionaries who are managing the affairs of the company and are associated with its day-to-day affairs, the complainant had said. 

Ramalinga Raju had then made a voluntary statement in the press while tendering his resignation wherein he admitted to the fraudulent deeds and acts committed by him and other directors with the assistance of the auditors.

The complainant, had further stated that all the accused conspired together with a dishonest intention and committed this huge financial fraud to cause financial loss to the shareholders and also make a wrongful gain for themselves.

She had said Ramalinga Raju admitted that the cash and the bank balances were inflated to the tune of Rs 5,040 crore and the liability was suppressed to the tune of Rs 1,230 crore and the debtor position was overstated. 

The case was later taken up by CBI, Hyderabad from CB-CID as per orders of Andhra Pradesh government and it was registered on February 19, 2009 against Ramalinga Raju and others. 

A special court was constituted for exclusive trial of this case that commenced on November 8, 2010.

In this case, 226 prosecution witnesses were examined and 3,137 documents were marked as material exhibits and 20 were marked as material objects.

According to CBI, it was a complicated case involving digital evidence, computer forensic techniques, audit procedures, accounting standards, revenue records, source codes and computer network logs, among others.