CBI files charge sheet in Satyam fraud case

HYDERABAD, INDIA: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the multi-crore Satyam scandal, today filed a charge-sheet, three months after the company’s founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted to the fraud.

The CBI filed the charge sheet in a special court for CBI cases here, said an IANS report.

The 2,315-page charge sheet said Ramalinga Raju and his brother and former managing director of the IT major were the brains behind the scam while seven other accused, including the three executives of Satyam’s finance wing who were arrested on Sunday, assisted them. These three were remanded to judicial custody till April 15.

The CBI personnel brought the charge sheet and thousands of other documents in a mini- truck to Nampally Criminal Court complex and submitted the same to the court of XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S. Samuel Victor Emmanuel, the report added. The charge sheet has statements of 500 witnesses.

Meanwhile, the court has also allowed the CBI to collect samples of specimen signatures and handwriting of the Raju brothers and the former chief financial officer of the company, Srinivas Vadlamani.

The orders on bail petitions of former auditors of Price Waterhouse S. Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri, will be delivered on Wednesday.

It was on January 7 that Ramalinga Raju quit as Satyam chairman after confessing that he cooked up the company’s account books and inflated profits over the past several years.