Satyam's Raju diverted funds through foreign accounts: CBI

HYDERABAD: Ramalinga Raju did not merely fudge accounts, but he also diverted and misappropriated funds of Satyam Computer Services Limited through foreign bank accounts. Though this has been the suspicion since the day the scandal broke out, it was for the first time on Monday that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said so in a written submission to the court.

���Evidence of diversion and misappropriation of Satyam funds has come to light. Interpol help has been sought to identify the end use of these funds,��� the submission made before the Andhra Pradesh high court said.

In its first chargesheet filed on April 9, the CBI had merely charged Ramalinga Raju and his associates with fudging the books of accounts and inflating the company���s profits and turnover. The CBI submission through, its special counsel, came curiously at the hearing of the bail application of PriceWaterhouse auditor S Goplakrishnan. The CBI also pointed out that its application for a lie detector test on Ramalinga Raju, Rama Raju and Srinivasa Vadlamani was pending in a lower court.

While making the point of diversion of funds, CBI also underscored that Satyam���s balance sheet had been inflated continuously for the last 6-7 years and said that the members of the extended family of Ramalinga Raju and Rama Raju sold off their shares at opportune times when share prices went up (2006 onwards). ���This is the time when they had thrown all corporate governance norms to the wind and ran the company as if it was a proprietorship company without any ethos,��� the CBI said in its submission.

Analysts point out that with this assertion it is clear that the CBI is now saying that Raju not only fudged account books but also diverted funds. ���The attempt by Raju was to confess to a lower crime and get away. But now he has been found out,��� an analyst said. The CBI says its multidisciplinary investigation team is now engaged in scrutinizing the receipts of money coming from abroad.

The CBI has stated that the two partners of PwC, Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri, were fully involved in the frauds and misdoings at Satyam and charged them with luring investors in buying shares of Satyam by "knowingly certifying forged and inflated balance sheets" of the company. The CBI said that a whistleblower had sent an email to one of the independent directors about the forged balance sheets of the company. ���This mail was sent to Gopalakrishnan for comments���, but he ���did not react and stated that there was no truth in the contents of the email,��� the CBI submitted to the court. The CBI said this was a rarest of rare case where a gigantic fraud was perpetrated by the management with active connivance of the statutory auditor of the company.

Other than this, the CBI also reiterated what it had submitted to the court before: how the auditors violated audit standards, did not check bank balances and sales invoices, but tried to give an impression that they did so by generating false letters on the system. The agency also said that it was assisted by experts from the RBI, the accountant general���s office, chartered accountants and forensic experts.