SC Cancels Satyam Accountants' Bails

The bails granted to the erstwhile Satyam Computers' auditor V S Prabhakar Gupta and PWC official S Gopalakrishnan were cancelled by the Supreme Court on Thursday. The apex court ordered the 2 co-accused in the account fraud case, to surrender by April 30th.

A Bench of the Supreme Court, comprising of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice B S Chauhan, has cancelled the bails of the 2 accountants, and has ordered them to surrender, failing which the CBI, which is investigating the case, would arrest them.

The apex court on April 18th had reserved its order on the plea filed by the CBI for the cancellation of the bails. The Bench today said that it was cancelling the bails after taking into account the charges mentioned against the 2 accused persons in the chargesheet filed by the CBI.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court had granted the bails to the co-accused in the Rs. 14,000 crores accounting fraud in June 2010.

The counsel appearing on behalf of the 2 accountants had argued that the CBI had delayed filing for cancellation of the bails granted by the state High Court, and also pointed out to the Bench that another PWC auditor, Talluri Srinivas, had been granted bail by the apex court.

The CBI, however, had argued that the roles of these 2 PWC auditors were different, and demanded that their bails be cancelled. The CBI counsel had also stated that Gopalkrishnan had been paid an exorbitant fee by the prime accused B Ramalinga Raju, then head of the company, and that that fee could have been payment for help offered to Raju.

The Supreme Court had on October 26th, 2010, cancelled the bail granted to B Ramalinga Raju, the founding chairman of Satyam Computers (Raju was released from jail on August 18th, 2010, after the state High Court had granted him bail). All the other co-accused had earlier been granted bail by various courts at different times.

Raju and his co-accused are undergoing trial for fudging the company's accounts to the tune of Rs. 14,000 crores. This is believed to be the biggest accounting fraud in the country's corporate history. (INN)