The quantum of the sentence is expected to be pronounced in the afternoon.

All the 10 accused in the multi-crore Satyam Computers account fraud, including founder-chairman B. Ramalinga Raju, were found guilty by a Special Court here on Thursday.

The judge B.V.L.N. Chakravarthy gave the verdict in the sensational fraud case in the morning, but the quantum of sentence will be pronounced in the afternoon.

Along with Mr. Ramalinga Raju, nine others – B. Rama Raju, Srinivas Vadlamani (former Chief Financial officer), S. Gopalakrishnan and Taluri Srinivas (partners Price Waterhouse), B. Suryanarayana Raju, Prabhakar Gupta (internal auditor), G. Ramakrishna (Head, Finance), D. Laxmipathy and Venkatpathi Raju were found guilty in the scam under sections 120 B read with Section 420.Mr. Ramalinga Raju and B. Rama Raju, were also found guilty under additional section 409 (Criminal breach of trust).The quantum of sentence would be pronounced in the afternoon after further arguments. After the verdict, the Judge heard the accused individually.

It may be mentioned here that the scam broke out following the confessional statement by Ramalinga Raju on January 7 of 2009. Initially, the investigation was handled by the Crime Investigation Department of the State Government which effected the initial arrest of the accused.

The case was transferred to the CBI within a couple of months. The agency constituted a multi-disciplinary investigation team with financial and other experts and filed three charge sheets. It also sent letters rogatory to six countries seeking information on company transactions.The special court was constituted in 2010 to exclusively deal with the Satyam cases though they were tried by a regular Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate prior to that. The CBI had produced 226 witnesses and voluminous documents to the court as part of prosecution. The court had marked 3,187 documents as objects of evidence.

Ramalinga Raju's letter-bomb on unsuspecting investors, employees and the government confessing to a Rs.7,136-crore fraud committed by him and his close circle of relatives and employees at the company took all by surprise. The revelation sent shockwaves across the market and Satyam shareholders lost more than Rs.14,000 crore collectively as the market — rightly — took the share to the cleaners.Hindu

 

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