The Hindu : Business : Satyam fiasco: have the funds been siphoned off?

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Satyam fiasco: have the funds been siphoned off?

A Saye Sekhar and M. Rajeev

Investigating agencies must look into this aspect: analysts

HYDERABAD: Several questions are being raised whether Satyam Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju has really spilled all the beans in his confessional statement on the Rs. 7,000-odd crore scam in the IT company

Mr. Raju has admitted the widening gap between the actual operating profits and those shown in the accounting books ‘for several years now’. But, he has glossed over the fact that Satyam raised about Rs. 2,000 crore from American Depository Receipts in 2001 and its continued acquisitions in line with its claims that it was looking to take over firms with a valuation of over $50 million.

The handsome profits shown in the books notwithstanding, Mr. Raju, claimed that the contract margin of the company was as low as three per cent against a market average in excess of 20 per cent. “When Satyam is no less than that of Wipro, Infosys and TCS, why will the company accept contracts with such low margins? Mr. Raju is obviously not into charitable acts,” a senior official in the Government asked.

Industry analysts agree with the view and suggest that the investigating agencies must look whether funds were siphoned off from Satyam Computers. Doubts are also being raised about the source of investments made in real estate by Maytas Properties, a privately owned firm of Mr. Raju’s family, in purchase of land in all major cities in the south, creating a land bank of 6,800 acres.

An analyst wondered how an auditors like PwC with a global reputation failed to raise questions about the fudging of figures. “They should have raised questions when Maytas Properties was declared as the most precious asset of Mr. Raju’s family with an estimated value of $1.3 billion compared to Maytas Infra ($0.3 billion) when Mr. Raju announced the decision to acquire them,” he said.

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