The swindle was discovered in late 2008 when the Hyderabad property market collapsed, leaving a trail back to Satyam.
[1] The scandal was brought to light in 2009 when chairman Byrraju Ramalinga Raju confessed that the company's accounts had been falsified.
[1] On 7 January 2009, the chairman of Satyam, Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, resigned, confessing that he had manipulated the accounts of Rs 7,000 crore in several forms.
[2] In February 2009, the CBI took over the case and filed three partial charge sheets (dated 7 April 2009, 24 November 2009, and 7 January 2010), over the course of the year.
"[citation needed] Also on 10 January 2009, the same day, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) team picked up Vadlamani Srinivas, Satyam's then-CFO, for questioning.
[7] On 11 January 2009, the government nominated noted banker Deepak Parekh, former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik, and former SEBI member C Achuthan to Satyam's board.
[10] Immediately following the news, Merrill Lynch (now a part of Bank of America) and State Farm Insurance terminated its engagement with the company.
[11][12][13][14][15] Satyam was the 2008 winner of the coveted Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance under Risk Management and Compliance Issues,[16] which was stripped from them in the aftermath of the scandal.
[18] India's National Stock Exchange has announced that it will remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index on 12 January.
Ramalinga Raju was charged with several offences, including criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, and forgery.
[citation needed] The Indian Government has stated that it may provide temporary direct or indirect liquidity support to the company.
[21] On 14 January 2009, Price Waterhouse, the Indian division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced that its reliance on potentially false information provided by the management of Satyam may have rendered its audit reports "inaccurate and unreliable".
[citation needed] On 9 April 2015, Raju and nine others were found guilty of collaborating to inflate the company's revenue, falsifying accounts and income tax returns, and fabricating invoices, among other findings, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment by Hyderabad court.