Business
Ramalinga Raju, others get bail in Satyam case
Hyderabad, May 11
A city court on Monday granted bail to B. Ramalinga Raju and all other
accused in multi-crore-rupee Satyam accounting fraud case.
The
metropolitan sessions court granted bail to Satyam Computers Services
Limited (SCSL) founder and former chairman Ramalinga Raju and his
brother Rama Raju on a personal bond amount of Rs.1 lakh each.
Another brother Suryanarayana Raju and seven others were given bail with bonds of Rs.50,000 each.
Raju,
the kingpin of the scam, and other convicts, currently lodged in
Cherlapally Central Prison here, had filed the bail application besides
challenging their conviction and sentences.
The accused, however, may be released only on Tuesday after the receipt of bail orders by the prison authorities.
The
additional chief metropolitan magistrate's court on April 9 had found
Raju and others guilty in the case relating to the country's biggest
accounting fraud, which came to light in 2009.
The court had
sentenced them to seven years' rigorous imprisonment. It also imposed a
fine of Rs.5.5 crore each on 60-year-old Ramalinga Raju and Rama Raju.
The
other accused are Satyam's former chief financial officer Vadlamani
Srinivas, former PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors Subramani
Gopalakrishnan and T. Srinivas, former employees G. Ramakrishna, D.
Venkatpathi Raju and Ch. Srisailam, and Satyam's former internal chief
auditor V.S. Prabhakar Gupta.
The scam came to light on January
7, 2009 when Ramalinga Raju confessed that the company's account books
and profits were inflated over many years to the tune of several crores
of rupees.
Police arrested him two days later on a complaint by some shareholders.
The
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took up investigation in
February 2009, put the loss to the shareholders at Rs.14,162 crore.
The CBI filed three charge sheets against Raju and the other accused.
Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced IT czar, spent nearly 32 months in jail. He was released on bail in 2011.
After
the scam, Tech Mahindra took over Satyam Computers in a
government-sponsored auction. Mahindra Satyam later merged with Tech
Mahindra.
An economic offences court on December 8 last year
sentenced Ramalinga Raju and three others to six months imprisonment in
six of the seven cases filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office
(SFIO).