One year jail for Raju, 83 Directors of Satyam cos

Six months jail for four women Directors for tax evasion

Hyderabad: Nampally court on Thursday sentenced to one year imprisonment as many as 84 directors of 19 companies whose promoters include wife and sons, family members and relatives of B Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam Computer Services Limited, for allegedly evading income-tax.

In addition, four women directors were sentenced to six months imprisonment. The sentenced directors included Ramalinga Raju, founder and ex-chairman of Satyam Computers, his wife Nandini, son Rama Raju and Radha, wife of Raju’s brother.

M Laxman, Special judge for Economic Offences Court, sentenced women directors to six months and men directors of the accused companies to one year simple imprisonment respectively, besides imposing Rs 10,000 fine on each of them.

However, the court, based on a plea of the accused, suspended the sentence for one month to enable them to approach higher court.

Public prosecutor for the Income Tax department, Ramakrishna Reddy said the accused companies deliberately did not pay the tax though some had shown amount ranging from Rs 93 lakh to Rs 2 crore in each company as pending tax in the account books.

"They were charged under section 276 c (2) and 278(B) of Income Tax.

Though they had sufficient means to pay the tax, they have deliberately not paid the tax, though it was declared in their books. The court upheld our argument," Reddy said.

Each company had four to five directors comprising mostly Raju's family members and same persons were repeating as directors in all companies, Reddy said. Raju and nine others accused including his two brothers are currently on bail in a case related to fudging of Satyam accounts in 2009. Augments pertaining to the Satyam multi-crore accounting fraud case are currently being held in a local court.