Hyderabad : A city court on Monday granted bail to B. Ramalinga Raju and all other accused in multi-crore-rupee Satyam accounting fraud case.
The metropolitan sessions court granted bail to Satyam Computers Services Limited (SCSL) founder and former chairman Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama Raju on a personal bond amount of Rs.1 lakh each.
Another brother Suryanarayana Raju and seven others were given bail with bonds of Rs.50,000 each.
Raju, the kingpin of the scam, and other convicts, currently lodged in Cherlapally Central Prison here, had filed the bail application besides challenging their conviction and sentences.
The accused, however, may be released only on Tuesday after the receipt of bail orders by the prison authorities.
The additional chief metropolitan magistrate’s court on April 9 had found Raju and others guilty in the case relating to the country’s biggest accounting fraud, which came to light in 2009.
The court had sentenced them to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment. It also imposed a fine of Rs.5.5 crore each on 60-year-old Ramalinga Raju and Rama Raju.
The other accused are Satyam’s former chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, former PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors Subramani Gopalakrishnan and T. Srinivas, former employees G. Ramakrishna, D. Venkatpathi Raju and Ch. Srisailam, and Satyam’s former internal chief auditor V.S. Prabhakar Gupta.
The scam came to light on January 7, 2009 when Ramalinga Raju confessed that the company’s account books and profits were inflated over many years to the tune of several crores of rupees.
Police arrested him two days later on a complaint by some shareholders.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took up investigation in February 2009, put the loss to the shareholders at Rs.14,162 crore.
The CBI filed three charge sheets against Raju and the other accused.
Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced IT czar, spent nearly 32 months in jail. He was released on bail in 2011.
After the scam, Tech Mahindra took over Satyam Computers in a government-sponsored auction. Mahindra Satyam later merged with Tech Mahindra.
An economic offences court on December 8 last year sentenced Ramalinga Raju and three others to six months imprisonment in six of the seven cases filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO).