The Satyam Computers accounting fraud did not take place in just one or two years, as its ex-chairman B Ramalinga Raju sought to project while admitting to the crime on January 7, 2009. But it dates back to 2002 or even before that.
That the fraud had been going on for more than seven years was revealed in the investigation carried out by Mahindra Satyam, the new management of Satyam Computers and disclosed in the company’s latest audit reports for the last two financial years. An independent forensic team appointed by Mahindra Satyam management to inquire into the financial irregularities committed by Raju had to do tremendous job to find out the huge fraud that took place over the years. The forensic team had to do 100 types of investigation, go through 2,70,000 files running into 30 terabytes, decode the secret data gathered from 300 hard disks seized from the erstwhile promoters, study one billion lines of secret transactions and examine 200 bank accounts to dig out the scam.
The forensic accountants discovered that the irregularities had been going on since 2002 and in certain instances, much before this period. They include fictitious accounts in revenue receipts, interest income, exchange fluctuations, salary costs, other expenses, bank borrowings and interest, and tax payments. The total extent of fraudulent entries were to the tune of Rs 6,800 crore, the investigation revealed.
