The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which undertook a mega investigation into the multi-crore Satyam fraud, has concluded that a company known for its exemplary performance and innovative management was bankrupted due to the “dirty face of its promoters who cooked up the books of accounts for the past several years.’’

The SFIO, which prepared an investigation report which runs into thousands of pages (including annexures), has revealed that the audacious falsification of accounts began eight years ago, that is in 2001.

After a scrutiny of Indian and foreign bank accounts and statements and questioning scores of people on oath, the SFIO has discovered that Satyam Computer Services Limited was in the red and recorded losses from 2007-08 onwards.

Despite committing financial falsifications, the company’s promoters blatantly showed receipt of interest on non-existent fixed deposits and as the report notes, “also paid corporate taxes on such non-existent accrued interest just to avoid detection of the fraud perpetuated by them for the past several years... details of non-existent interest calculated on the basis of the details obtained by the company in juxtaposition with the confirmations directly received by the banks.’’

An amount of Rs 186.90 crore was discovered to have been paid as excess corporate taxes.

Giving the genesis of the scam, the SFIO’s findings are that “conspiracy’’ to artificially and substantially jack-up the revenues and profits in account books began with the promoters deliberately leaving loopholes in the accounting software packages of the company.

The report —portions of which are with The Indian Express — describes how the promoters used ‘admin’ login IDs and generated fictitious invoices in the Invoice Management System, which could be concealed from the view of their employees, using ‘admin’ and ‘super’ login IDs.

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