After six years the Satyam scam first came into right, a special court on Thursday convicted the firm's founder B Ramalinga Raju and nine other accused for criminal conspiracy. The scam jolted corporate India after the firm's founder and then Chairman B Ramalinga Raju on January 7, 2009, in an email to market regulator Sebi confessed to inflating the books of the company, besides understating liabilities. The accounting fraud - the biggest in the country - was estimated at nearly Rs 10,000 crore. In February 2009, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the investigation. During the trial, the CBI alleged that the scam caused a loss of Rs 14,000 crore to shareholders of Satyam. Satyam founder and former chairman B Ramalinga Raju, along with his brother and Satyam's former MD B Rama Raju, its former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas and former director Ram Mynampati were among the chief accused in the case. Around 3,000 documents were marked and 226 witnesses examined during the trial that began nearly six years ago. Mr Raju later retracted his confession statement and contended that all charges levelled by the CBI were false. The CBI accused Mr Raju and the others of cheating, breach of trust by way of inflating invoices and incomes and falsifying returns through violation of various income tax laws. After the fraud came to light, the government ordered auction of the company to protect investors and employees of the then fourth largest IT firm. Satyam was later acquired by Tech Mahindra, and then renamed as Mahindra Satyam and was eventually merged with Tech Mahindra.
