The Special Economic Offences Wing (EOW) court of Nampally on Monday sentenced Ramalinga Raju, the founder of Satyam and his brother Rama Raju to six months of imprisonment. It also imposed a fine of Rs10 lakh each for violation of various provisions of the Companies Act.
The former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Satyam, Vadlamani Srinivas, and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ram Mynampati were also sentenced to 6 months imprisonment, while a fine of Rs10 lakh each was also imposed on them.
The court has also imposed a fine of Rs20,000 each on all former independent directors of Satyam namely Vinod K Dham, Krishna G Palepu, TR Prasad, BS Raju, Mangalam Srinivasan and Mendu Ramamohan Rao.
All the accused were given one month time for appeal against the judgment.
The economic offences wing had filed a separate case with regard to the Satyam scam. The judgment in another case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is slated for December 23.
In all, the EOW had filed seven cases against Raju and his former colleagues. Out of these, they were convicted in six cases and acquitted in one case.
On the other hand, the CBI charged Raju and former employees of Satyam with offences ranging from falsification of records, cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and causing disappearance of evidence. No charges were made against former independent directors of the company.
Apart from Raju brothers , those charged by the CBI included Vadlamani Srinivas, former PWC auditors S Gopalakrishna and T Srinivas and former employees of the company Suryanarayana Raju, G Ramakrishna, D Venkatapathy Raju and Ch Srisailam.
The Satyam scam came to light on January 7, 2009 when Ramalinga Raju confessed to a massive accounting fraud in the company. He had stated that the balance sheet of the company consisted non-existent cash and bank balances of Rs5,040 crore, an accrued interest of Rs376 crore which was also non-existent, an understated liability of Rs 1,230 crore and an over stated debtors position of Rs490 crore (as against Rs2,651 reflected in the books).
