As part of its investigations into the multi-crore Satyam Computer Services accounting scam, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is claiming to have found evidence on the company filing false income tax returns with fraudulent and dishonest intensions of cheating the shareholders and causing wrongful loss to Satyam.
The CBI is estimating the loss to the company due to these false I-T returns to be about Rs 126.57 crore.
In its second supplementary charge-sheet filed on Thursday with the 14th additional chief metropolitan magistrate court, the CBI has once again named B Ramalinga Raju, his brother B Rama Raju, ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, former vice-president (finance) G Ramakrishna, two auditors S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri as accused.
The premier investigation body has also charged the accused under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 and 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471(use of forged documents as genuine) and 477-A (falsification of accounts) of the Indian Penal Code.
In this charge sheet of 30 page with all the related documents running into over 3,500 pages, the CBI said that the accused hadinflated the revenue of the company by infusing false and fictitious sales invoices and shown the amount received and deposited as fixed deposits in various scheduled banks.
“Due to this inflated revenue and the inflated income in the form of interest on the non-existent fixed deposits, an additional tax liability to the tune of Rs 526.37 cores was created on the company. Then by taking recourse to the provisions of Section 90 and 91 of the Income Tax Act, the accused in furtherance of the conspiracy have shown higher tax remittances in foreign countries to get relief from the tax chargeable in India,” the CBI’s deputy inspector general V V Laxminarayana said.
According to the CBI, the accused have achieved this by showing income on the non-existent revenues as part of the income of the overseas branches of Satyam while filing I-T returns in India.
Correspondingly while filing the returns in foreign countries, the non-existent income towards interest on non-existent fixed deposits was not included in the income declared to the tax authorities in those countries and no additional tax was paid.
In doing so the higher tax remittances to the tune of Rs 329.58 crore were shown as if paid in overseas tax remittances while filing returns in India.
“By resorting to this modus operandi, the accused could not completely setoff the additional tax liability created on the company and therefore, in furtherance of the conspiracy, the accused who were entrusted with the property of Satyam have dishonestly made tax payments by way of self-assessment tax and in some cases not making lawful claim for refund of TDS,” the CBI said.
This, according to the agency, has resulted in squandering of the money in violation of the trust bestowed on them by the shareholders of the company in order to conceal their fraudulent and dishonest deeds of inflating income on account of fictitious sales and interest on non-existent fixed deposits by violating the existing law and corporate ethics.
Comments