New Delhi, April 9, (dpa/GNA) - An Indian court on Thursday convicted the founder of what was one of the country's largest software firms of cheating and sentenced him and nine associates to seven years' imprisonment, officials investigating the case said.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd founder B Ramalinga Raju, his brother B Rama Raju, six former employees of Satyam and two auditors from PriceWaterhouseCoopers were found guilty in an accounting fraud case, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official V Chandrasekar said.
The fraud was discovered in 2009 when shareholders complained of discrepancies and Raju admitted to having overstated profits for years. He later denied the statement during the trial.
The CBI had charged the accused with collaborating to inflate revenue, falsify accounts and income tax returns, create false invoices and fake fixed deposit receipts to create a positive picture of the firm's financial position in order to deceive investors.
The CBI estimated the fraud was to the tune of 140 billion rupees (2.8 billion dollars).
Raju, former chairman of Satyam and his brother and former financial officer B Rama Raju were found guilty of criminal conspiracy and cheating by the court in the southern city of Hyderabad, where Satyam was headquartered.
They were asked to pay a fine of 50 million rupees (803,000 dollars) each, Chandrasekar said.
The eight others who were found guilty of the same charges were asked to pay fines of 2.5 million rupees each, Chandrasekar said citing a CBI lawyer present in the court.
A total of 216 witnesses and 3,038 documents were examined during the six-year trial.
The convicted men are expected to appeal in a higher court both for bail and against the verdict.
Raju and his brother were arrested in 2009 and released on bail after 32 months. The trial in the fraud case began in 2010.
After the arrests, the government set up a board headed by an eminent banker to run Satyam.
It was acquired by the Mahindra Group of companies in a government-overseen auction in April 2009, stabilised through its crisis as Mahindra-Satyam and finally merged with the group's IT wing Tech Mahindra in 2013.
Tech Mahindra, currently India's fifth biggest IT services firm, does not figure in the CBI charges against the accused.
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