Court likely to fix date for Satyam verdict on June 23

HYDERABAD: The special CBI court here is likely to fix the date for pronouncement of verdict in the case related to accounting fraud in the erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Ltd on June 23.

Satyam founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju is the prime accused in the case.

"The court examined 216 witnesses and marked 3,038 documents.....it may give the date for judgement on June 23," said CBI prosecutor K Surender.

Ramalinga Raju, his brother Rama Raju, chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas and seven others are facing charges of criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, etc under the Indian Penal Code. They have been accused, mainly, of falsification of accounts which caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to Satyam shareholders.

The company was afterwards merged into Tech Mahindra. The scam, touted as the biggest accounting fraud in the country, came to light after Raju confessed to cooking up the books for several years. He and his brother were arrested on January 9, 2009.

CBI filed three chargesheets which were later clubbed into a single one. Two chargesheets dealt with account falsification while the third one dealt with income tax violations.

At present, all the accused are out on bail, though the Enforcement Directorate has also filed a chargesheet against them under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.