Satyam verdict: Why did it take the judiciary so long, asks economist Gurcharan Das

As a court on Thursday held the founder of Satyam Computer Services, which was once one of India’s biggest IT outsourcing companies, guilty in the country’s biggest corporate accounting fraud, economist Gurcharan Das slammed the judiciary for the amount of time it took to announce its verdict.

Satyam shocked investors in 2009 when its founder and former Chairman Ramalinga Raju said the company’s profits had been overstated for years and assets falsified in a fraud allegedly worth over $1.5 billion, but the verdict in the case was only pronounced eight years later.

“I think this is a significant verdict. Certainly, it sends a very good message. However, it also sends a message about our judiciary. Why should it take so many years to come up with such a verdict? It’s a verdict against our judiciary,” Das told CNN-IBN.

“The markets and capitalism demand quick enforcement of the law so that the guilty do not get away. You can only get accountability when you have quick enforcement,” he added.

“This verdict is a message to the judiciary that they ought to get their house in order,” said the economist.

Ramalinga Raju, the Satyam Computer Services Limited’s founder and former chairman, and his brother were found guilty of criminal breach of trust, a CBI lawyer said.

Eight others were declared guilty of criminal conspiracy in the country’s biggest accounting fraud that left the corporate world stunned in 2009.

(With inputs from IANS)