Satyam, a $1 Billion fraud

What a national disgrace Satyam Chairman has brought to all of us. Satyam means truth and I am sure till today this was the mantra of the company but the shocking disclosure of its chairman, Raju once again demonstrates that both the good and the bad exists within each of us and who takes the upper hand decides the snapshot of the action. However, what was disturbing in Raju’s case is that he was the perpetrator of the wrong deeds over a number of years and he just tried to keep it under the wraps as long as he possible could. This makes his mistake appalling and not worthy of slightest sympathy.

Raju himself has admitted that he was riding a tiger and didn’t know how to get off without being eaten. His actions to cover up his mistakes for so long are nothing short of mass financial murders akin to mass murders that we sometimes see in our society. There have been millions of small investors whose wealth just evaporated in front of their eyes and they could not do anything about it. It was their life savings and the greed of a few just took everything away from these hapless employee and small shareholders.

This debacle also poses some very disturbing questions:

1. How can one person make such a large scale fraud of investor’s money?
2. Did Satyam auditors also colluded with Raju while they were supposed to protect the shareholder’s interest?
3. Was the Satyam board sleeping and forget their fiduciary duty of overseeing the shareholder’s interest?
4. The fate of approx. 53000 Satyam employee and their families (I am glad that I left Satyam 4 years back)
5. How the small investors will regain their losses?
6. Why Raju and so many others were allowed to remain outside for almost 3 full days after their shocking disclosures and hence giving them time to destroy key evidences?

However, I do see some silver lining out of the current mess. I am sure there will lot of scrutiny in terms of audit and financial well being of the companies which ultimately will help in protecting the shareholder’s and their employee’s. Role of the Government in bailing out companies of national / international stature will also be of significant interest.