Another Satyam bookkeeper under scanner

HYDERABAD: After Srinivas Vadlamani , the Andhra Pradesh police scanner is on Ramakrishna G, the vice-president of accounts at Satyam. Though number four in hierarchy in the finance department , Ramakrishna was the only other official in Satyam���s finance set up other than Vadlamani Srinivas who had a close view of the company���s account book.

���The finance department in Satyam has been very compartmentalised so nobody knew in detail what has happening at an overall level,��� a senior Satyam staffer told TOI. The only exceptions were Vadlamani and Ramakrishna who had access to the company���s consolidated accounts.

���The finance department functioned in an opaque fashion and operated in a hush hush manner. Even details of budgets of different departments were kept a closely guarded secret. They would not even part with the list of customers of the company,��� an insider said.

It seems that three senior vice-presidents of finance in Satyam: V V K Raju, Ramesh Kumar and Subbu G also did not have as much knowledge of the financial position of Satyam as did Vadlamani and Ramakrishna . These three senior vice-presidents were ���more on the business side��� to quote Satyam staffers.

Insiders also suggest that in some ways Ramakrishna was more powerful than Vadlamani. ���He only listened to Ramalinga Raju and nobody else. If he said no to something, only Ramalinga Raju could overrule him, not even Rama Raju nor Vadlamani could do anything about it,��� senior Satyam staffers said.

When Sebi staffers quizzed Vadlamani for the first time at Satyam office two days ago, Ramakrishna was at hand to help him explain things to the investigating officials. Ramakrishna, who is designated as vice-president has been in the company for more than a decade.

It appears that this opaqueness in the finance department of Satyam started at least a decade ago. This gives a hint as to when Raju could have started to think of stashing away the company���s funds, analysts said.