Action against Satyam’s auditors should have been taken much earlier. Ramalinga Raju, former CEO, Satyam Computer Services, has confessed that he had been fudging the company’s balance sheets for the last eight years. Price Waterhouse had been Satyam’s auditors from 2000 to 2008. A media report has disclosed that Price Waterhouse received a consolidated audit fee of Rs 4.3 crore from Satyam for the financial year 2007-08, which was three times more than the amount paid by even IT major Infosys to its auditors. Such disproportionate fee was part of a trend over the past few years. The report ‘Price Waterhouse auditors arrested’, January 25, says that one of the two Price Waterhouse men arrested, said the consolidated financial statements gave a true and fair view in conformity with the accounting principles generally accepted in India, but after Raju’s confession the audit firm had said its opinions on the financial statements “may be rendered inaccurate and unreliable”. All this put together smacks of a criminal conspiracy in the Rs 7,800-crore scam and makes a sound case for action against the auditors.
MC Joshi, Lucknow
