Satyam scandal: Ramalinga Raju and 9 others found guilty in India's biggest accounting fraud

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in India has held B Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman of scandal-hit IT services provider Satyam, and nine others guilty in the accounting fraud that rocked the country.

The court found Raju and others guilty of cheating, forgery and criminal breach of trust. The CBI has charged the accused with collaborating to inflate revenues, fabricate invoices, falsify accounts and income tax returns, and fake fixed deposit receipts.

Raju's brother and Satyam's former MD B Rama Raju, another brother B Suryanarayana Raju, former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, former PwC 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 are the remaining people accused in the case.

The sentence will be announced on 10 April.

The accounting fraud, which is said to be the biggest in India's history, came into the limelight after Raju allegedly confessed to cooking the company's books for many years. Hiding the company's difficulties, its profits were inflated to the tune of several billions of rupees.

Around 3,000 documents were marked and 226 witnesses were examined during the trial that spanned about six years.

Following the revelation of the fraud, shares in Satyam plummeted, and the company was sold to Tech Mahindra in April 2009 in a government-overseen auction.

Tech Mahindra rebranded the company Mahindra Satyam and effectively brought back the company into good health. In June 2013, Tech Mahindra merged itself with Satyam Computer, and the combined entity is currently the fifth biggest IT services provider in India.