PwC found no fraud in Satyam
Press Trust of India
NEW DELHI, Jan. 11: Satyam's Rs 7,800 crore scam may have sent the government, regulators and India Inc in a tizzy, but the top auditing firm Pricewaterhouse saw no fraud in the IT company's accounts during 2007-08.
Incidentally, Satyam Computer Services, whose founder B Ramalinga Raju disclosed having cooked the accounts for several years to inflate profits, gave its auditors a five-fold hike in their out of pocket expenses.
As per Satyam's accounts, vetted by Pricewaterhouse, auditors were paid Rs 3.73 crore during 2007-08 as against Rs 3.67 crore in the previous financial year. During this period, their “reimbursement of out of pocket expenses” went up from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
The auditor's report, signed on 21 April 2008, by Pricewaterhouse partner Mr Srinivas Talluri, said: “We have neither come across any instance of fraud on or by the company (Satyam), noticed or reported during the year, nor we have been informed of such case by the management.”
Meanwhile, PwC did not reply to queries whether its global CEO Mr Samuel A DiPiazza had cancelled his scheduled visit to India from Saturday in the wake of the audit arm's involvement in the Satyam scam.
The auditor's report also said: “These (Satyam's) financial statements are the responsibilities of the company's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with the auditing standards generally accepted in India. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material miss-statements,” it said.
Under attack for the auditing of scandal-hit Satyam's accounts, PwC has maintained that: “Audits were conducted by Pricewaterhouse in accordance with applicable auditing standards and were supported by appropriate audit evidence”.
In a statement two days ago, the company further said: “Given our obligation for client's confidentiality it is not possible for us to comment upon alleged irregularities.”
While Raju in his statement to the board and Sebi had disclosed that he was quitting because of the failure in bridging the gap between fictitious and real assets, the auditors' report said that the company was maintaining proper records, showing full particulars, including quantitative details and situations of fixed assets.
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