Raju's wife, kin among 19 directors convicted for evading Income Tax

A court in Hyderabad on Thursday convicted directors of 19 companies whose promoters include wife and sons, family members and relatives of B Ramalinga Raju founder of Satyam Computer Services Limited, for allegedly evading income tax.

M Laxman, special judge for Economic Offences Court, sentenced the men and women directors of the accused companies to one-and-a-half year simple imprisonment each, besides imposing Rs 10,000 fine on each of them.

. . .

However, the court, based on a plea of the accused, suspended the sentence for one month to enable them to approach higher court.

Public prosecutor for the Income Tax department, Ramakrishna Reddy said they argued that the accused companies deliberately did not pay the tax though some have shown amount ranging from Rs 93 lakh (Rs 9.3 million) to Rs 2 crore (Rs 20 million) in each company as pending tax in the account books.

"They were charged under section 276 c(2) and 278(B) of Income Tax.  

. . .

“Though they had sufficient means to pay the tax, they have deliberately not paid the tax, though it was declared in their books.  

“The court upheld our argument," Reddy said.

Each company has four to five directors comprising mostly Raju's family members and same persons were repeating as directors in all companies, Reddy said.

Raju and nine others accused, including his two brothers, are currently on bail in a case related to fudging of Satyam accounts in 2009.

Augments pertaining to the Satyam multi-crore accounting fraud case are currently being held in a local court.