The former Cabinet Secretary T.R. Prasad, the former Director of IIT, Delhi and Madras, V.S. Raju and the former Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB) M. Rammohan Rao have been named by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) for the first time in the Rs. 11,000 crore fraud in Satyam Computers.
They are among 11 ex-directors and other top managers of the company against whom the SFIO, an investigation arm of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has filed seven cases in the special court for economic offences here, under various provisions of the Companies Act, 1956. The court summoned all eleven persons accused in these cases to appear before it on December 11.
The other accused include Vinod K. Dham, known as the father of Pentium; Krishna G. Palepu, a professor of Harvard Business School; and Mangalam Srinivasan, a U.S.-based academician. All of them were independent directors until they resigned from the board when the fraud came to light.
The former company chairman B. Ramalinga Raju and two other ex-bosses B. Rama Raju and Srinivas Vadlamani, who are in jail facing police cases, were also shown as accused.
Two top mangers who were not brought to book by the police but have now been named by the SFIO are Ram Mynampati and G. Jayaraman. While the former was considered the right hand man of Ramalinga Raju with control over 60 per cent of the company’s business , Jayaraman was the company secretary.
The SFIO filed the case against Ram Mynampati showing him as a resident of the U.S., where he ‘fled’ before the police could lay hands on him. The agency accused him of receiving remuneration much in excess of the payout due to him. The company accounts for 2007-08 showed that Mynampati’s salary package was Rs. 3.5 crore, while all other directors together got only Rs. 2.6 crore in the whole year. Ramalinga Raju collected Rs. 60.4 lakh and the seven non-executive directors Rs. 1.56 crore.
The prosecutors told The-Hindu that the cases were filed against them on various charges, including exaggerated balance sheets and unpaid dividends shown as paid.
Meanwhile, the Directorate of Enforcement has attached another chunk of immovable properties, mainly agricultural lands, belonging to Ramalinga Raju and his family members, with the adjudicating authority at New Delhi under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The purchase consideration of the twenty five properties was shown at Rs. 20 crore.
The first chunk of 287 properties with a purchase consideration of Rs. 170 crore and 34 lakh Satyam shares were attached in August.
