Andhra Pradesh police, the disgraced Satyam chief said, "For about seven years, we wanted to show more income in the accounts to avoid others from getting involved in company affairs and any possible hostile acquisition."
Raju, who was arrested on Friday along with his brother, B Rama Raju, and interrogated by the local CID before being shifted to a jail on Saturday, said he had "manipulated the balance sheet to attract more business and showed unavailable amount as available cash in hand."
The 54-year-old tycoon added: "This process continued for seven years and the margin amount shown increased much more year after year. In this process, me and my brother Rama Raju... used to take decisions and instruct our chief financial officerto do as instructed."
But Satyam's arrested chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, in his confessional statement, denied having anything to do with handling bank balances. He also said that he was only the overall incharge of audit and used to see the balance sheet and profit and loss account prepared by his staff.
"The auditors during their interaction never pointed out any deficiencies... I used to take comfort and certify the accounts," Vadlamani said in his statement.
He added, "Bank deposits were directly handled by the chairman and managing director. I was specifically asked not to look into that area of operation."
The Raju brothers and Vadlamani will have to spend three more days in the Chanchalguda jail before their bail pleas can be heard. The pleas came up before a magistrate on Monday but the hearing was deferred to Friday.
On his part, Vadlamani shifted the blame to his assistant, Ramakrishna G. "The entire audit used to be taken care by him —book keeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable and treasury management. He used to give a report once in every quarter." Ramakrishna, vice-president of accounts in Satyam was known to be very powerful.
But along with his denial, the ex-CFO told police he had smelled a rat for some time. "I suspected something was going wrong when the payments were delayed. I asked the chairman and the managing director for taking payments amount from fixed deposits. But they told me not to take it from fixed deposits and manage with operational cash. This was continuously occurring for the last 5-6 years." He said the fixed deposits were fictitious ones managed by the audit section and management."
13 Jan 2009, 0219 hrs IST, TNN
HYDERABAD: Ramalinga Raju appears to have been cooking Satyam books for longer than investigators have suspected. In his confession recorded by
CAclubindia
