Ramalinga Raju, 5 others chargesheeted by CBI

Tainted chairman of Satyam Computers B Ramalinga Raju and five others were chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday for allegedly filing false income tax returns resulting in a loss of Rs 126.57 crore (Rs 1.26 billion) to the company and shareholders.

Besides Raju, the others chargsheeted included his brother B Rama Raju, the then CFO V Srinivas, the then Vice President (Finance) G Ramakrishna of Satyam Computers and two auditors of PricewaterhouseCoopers -- S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas.

The 30-page chargesheet was filed in a designated court here under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 and 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (use of forged documents as genuine) and 477-A (falsification of accounts) of the IPC. The chargesheet cited 32 documents and 26 witnesses and the entire documentation runs into 3552 pages.

"The accused have inflated the revenue of the company by infusing false and fictitious sale invoices and shown the amount received and deposited as fixed deposits in various scheduled banks," CBI DIG V V Laxminarayana said.

He said due to this inflated revenue and the inflated income in the form of interest on the non-existent fixed deposit, there was an additional tax liability of Rs 526.37 crore on the company.

In the chargesheet, CBI claimed to have evidence against the accused of filing false income tax returns with fraudulent and dishonest intentions of cheating the shareholders and thereby causing wrongful loss to Satyam Computer, the agency said.