The curious case of Ramalinga Raju, Satyam founder

A Great Entrepreneur, who was once considered as the Mascot of Rising Hyderabad, Icon and Poster Boy of Indian IT Industry during 2000 to 2008, Mr. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju has been sentenced to 7 years of Rigorous imprisonment by a Special Court in Hyderabad in the Satyam scam case along with 9 others. These 9 members include two of his brothers and 2 PWC Auditors and 5 Officers of Satyam. This case started when Raju made some confessions on 7th January 2009 about certain gaps in the Financials of Satyam books of accounts. He surrendered himself to the Law of the land on 9th January 2009. The case was handed over and investigated by the CBI. After prolonged hearings and arguments, the Judge of the Special Court gave his judgment on 9th of April, 2015, exactly after 6 years and 3 months.

Satyam way: Mr. B. Ramalinga Raju started Satyam Computer Services Limited in June 1987 in a humble way. He has developed, nurtured and tailored that Company into a Big Giant, spread across 66 countries with a $ 2 billion turnover by 2007 taking it to a prestigious 4th place in Indian Software Industry. Satyam had provided employment to more than 40,000 young engineers. (it was said to be 53,000 once) The name of Satyam was synonymous with IT. Satyam offered very high salaries, which forced other companies to match their salary structure.

Good works: Raju also did a lot of good things for the society apart from Satyam and its employees. He was a considerate employer with optimistic Corporate Social Responsibility. He established the first of its kind and state of the art 108 ambulance services called EMRI in August 2005 and Rural Health Services with 104 ambulances during August 2007. He played a key role in starting the Nandi Foundation and India School of Business apart from Satyam Foundation. We all know how the services of 108 are being hailed by one and all in more than 15 states in our Country. The services of 108 ambulances are saving thousands of lives every day in some part of our Nation. A great initiative, pioneered by Raju, to save the people in emergency.

Appeal by Raju: And then what made him to do something wrong or act in such a way which brought down his enormous prestige and the fame and pulled him down to earth from a top international Hero status. Is there one who led the conspiracy? Are the news paper reports totally true? Is there anything behind it, beyond it, which has not seen the light? Did the investigating agency carry out its job perfectly and properly? The news items printed on 10th April in the media says, that Raju said “I am not concerned with the letter said to have been written on 7th January 2009, about the fraud in Satyam financials. That letter was wrongly attributed to me. I am innocent and wrongly involved in the conspiracy. I was not given the opportunity to explain my virtuousness. There are number of Department heads to run the operations. There is total decentralization in the Company. There are independent business units under the leadership of various business heads which compete with each other to excel in their performance and get incentives and promotions in their careers. If anything goes wrong, that would have been done in a major scale with the involvement of so many persons and not by one individual. The investigation agency did not consider this aspect at all. This was mentioned in the written reply to the court. ”Understand that they are planning to appeal against the verdict given by the Special court Judgment.”

Investigation of the Case: If we study this case and observe the investigations and charges filed by CBI, there is nothing new that they found other than what Mr. Raju had confessed and stated originally on 7th January 2009. Then why has it taken so many years to close the case taking 423 adjournments, right from 9th December 2010. More than 220 prosecution witnesses were examined and more than 3000 documents were shown in support of their arguments. As mentioned by the advocate for the defense, “The CBI enlisted 640 witnesses, but suddenly dropped as many as 400 of them and the trial court accepted this without posing any questions.” Was this correct? If so what was the reason behind this?

Role of Senior Officials: We also know that there are very highly qualified persons from IIMs, IITs, Harvard, Stanford etc., at very high levels in Satyam Computers in all the departments. Raju is known to recruit best employees with higher qualifications with good experience at higher salaries. When there are such qualified and talented persons in the posts of Presidents, Vice Presidents, CFOs or even Directors, how did such fraud take place? There were systems in place, whistle blower policy, big internal audit department, Private and independent Directors, fully qualified and experienced CAs, ICWAs and CS. We know Companies employ qualified and experienced persons to run their organizations in a proper and safe way as per the Government laws in practice. Those people were paid huge salaries plus incentives and SOPs. They are supposed to guide the management in a right way and within legal frame work. What were they doing when things were going wrong like this? Now if somebody says that they were asked to carry out the mistakes, why did they accept? Just because of extra money or promotions. They were lured for extra money.

Why did not they say NO to commiting fraud. If Officials at such high level keep quiet and allows fraud to happen in the Companies in such big way, what is the value of their qualifications and education? Those Officials should have the guts to say NO firmly and walk away from the Company if required. Getting a job elsewhere is not a problem at all for them. Now that their qualifications are withdrawn, jobs lost and gone to jail. What is the use? What have they gained? Getting a good job or big job with big salary is not the criteria but to keep up the significance of education, morals, and values is more important.

Justice to the System: We believe “no one is above the law,” but Justice has to be done to everyone. It should also ensure that such incidents do not happen in future in any of the Corporates. There should be suitable mechanism to arrest such frauds. But, unfortunately, there are once again people only to act and rise to the occasion, system on its own cannot do anything.

Hope Raju will get justice in the higher courts, if he was correct, as stated by him. Our sympathies go with his family members, who are in great pain at this stage. They need patience and courage at this crucial juncture. Wishing him good health and luck.

By Mangapati Rao Komaragiri

The opinion expressed in this article are those of the author and does not reflect the views of the organisation