Former Satyam employees and a former Price
Waterhouse (PW) India auditor have been released on bail by the
Supreme Court in India as they face charges for alleged involvement
in the Satyam accounting fraud, according to India media
reports.
The former Satyam employees granted bail are
former internal chief auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta, executives G
Ramakrishna, D Venkatpathi Raju and C h Srisailam as well as PwC
auditor Subramani Gopalakrishnan.
The five are said to have approached the
Supreme Court challenging the 30 August order of Andhra Pradesh
High Court which had rejected their earlier bail plea.
The grounds for bail stated are: the trial in
the Satyam scam was not completed within the Supreme
Court-stipulated deadline of 31 July and all the prosecution
witnesses had been examined.
Currently only two of the ten accused of the
fraud are still in prison, B Ramalinga Raju and his brother and
Satyam’s former managing director Rama Raju.
The Satyam fraud unfolded in January 2008,
when financial irregularities totalling about $1.44bn – the largest
corporate fraud in India’s history – were discovered. PW India was
Satyam’s statutory auditor at the time the irregularities took
place.
