The Satyam case: major fraud
India has seen corporate scandals in the past, but never one of this magnitude. A software company, touted as a success story, the 4th largest software company in India and one that services around 1/3rd of the Fortune 500 companies, the events of the past one month have been a total shock. They have called into question the entire range of issues related to ethics, corporate governance, fiduciary responsibilities, professional auditing, and so on. There will be a lot more soul-searching that will happen, a lot more inspection and suspicion of other companies, search for more skeletons in the cupboard, and so on.
What has Mr. Raju brought forward. Starting from the surprise news about Satyam trying to buyout the realty companies, Maytas (run by Mr. Raju’s sons), this is almost like a film story. The news about Satyam using its huge estimated surplus of more than $1.2 billion to buy companies related to the promoter (especially when the promoter held only 8% shareholding in the company) was a huge blow to all norms of corporate governance and met with huge resistance. Seeing this resistance, the company decided to roll back this proposal, but things would not stop from that point onward.
Categories: Accountable, Corruption, Crime, Economy, Finance, Fraud, Punishment Tags:
