The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has revealed in a secret report that not only were promoter-directors of Satyam Computer Services Ltd manipulating books and accounts since the past eight years, they were also claiming commissions and dividends, as well as paying associates incentive salaries on the inflated profits.

The SFIO has calculated that an amount of Rs 338 crore was paid as “incentive” on the basis of aggregated book profits, which was actually not payable. When a recast of profit & loss accounts was conducted, it was revealed that that even when the company was making a loss in 2007-08, promoters claimed commissions totalling Rs 42.51 lakh.

After a scrutiny of Satyam’s balance sheets for the last eight years, and after questioning employees under oath, the probe team found that a vast majority of the fictitious receipts were being shown in the Bank of Baroda account in New York.

The report reveals, “On scrutiny of the current account balances obtained from the bank, huge differences were found right from financial year 2001-02 onwards. It was also learnt that Satyam falsified its books of accounts by showing fictitious, non-existent fixed deposits along with accrued interest thereon…’’

When the fixed deposits shown in the balance sheet/trial balance were compared with the actual fixed deposits as per bank confirmations, it was found that Satyam had shown a huge amount of fixed deposits with non-existent interest in five bank accounts maintained with ICICI Bank, HSBC Bank, HDFC Bank, BNP Paribas and Citibank.

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