Apart from several thousand investors, nine insurance and asset management companies suffered huge losses due to the multi-crore accounting fraud at erstwhile Satyam Computer Services Limited (SCSL).
According to the prosecution in the six-year-old case, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance has suffered the highest loss of Rs 698.67 crore, followed by HDFC Standard Life insurance (Rs 218.07 crore), HDFC Asset Management Company Limited (Rs 190.45 crore), Birla Sun Life Asset Management (Rs 111.87 crore),Franklin Templeton Asset MGMT Company (Rs 100.37 crore), UTI Mutual Funds (Rs 85.97 crore), Metlife Insurance Company (Rs 23.75 crore), SBI Life Insurance Company (Rs 22.84 crore) and ICCI Prudential Asset Management (Rs 22.67 crore).
The prosecution contended that the companies made investments in Satyam believing the financial statements and annual reports of the then fourth largest IT company in the country. "Later , on account of the statement made by accused A1 ( Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju) on 07-01-2009 disclosing falsification of accounts in M/s SCSL over a period, the share value of M/s SCSL fell drastically and as a result the investors as well as financial institutions sustained a loss of about Rs 14 thousand crore".
The accused in the case, however, denied the charges. As per the copy of the judgement delivered in the case on Thursday, Ramalinga Raju contention was that "he has nothing to do with the e-mail (statement) dated 07-01-2009 and it is not for him to determine whether any losses were suffered by the investors and M/s SCSL never stated investment criteria in the annual statements".
The accused A2 ( B Rama Raju, Satyam MD) and A3 (Vadlamani Srinivas, Satyam CFO) contended they were no way connected with "alleged letter dated 07-01-2009". The accused also questioned the locus standi and competence of some of the witnesses. They also questioned admissibility of some of the documents as evidence.
The additional chief metropolitan magistrate, BVLN Chakravarthi, who delivered the judgement, however, stated that he "do not find any reason to disbelieve the evidence of the above witnesses relating to investors".
"Here it is pertinent to note down that the money invested by the above said companies belongs to lakhs of innocent people who invested their money in the funds managed by the said companies with a fond hope that their money will be safe if invested in companies like M/s SCSL but unfortunately their trust and belief was betrayed by the accused by publishing false financials with inflated profits", the judge further stated.
For the record, the judge has sentenced all the accused in the case for seven years imprisonment and imposed varying amount of fine on them.
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