Raju may retract his confession

 L'affaire Satyam is poised to take a dramatic turn. In a clear indication that he is all set to retract his confession and deny all the charges, former Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju has said that his letter of January 2009 was a mere resignation letter from the post of the company's chairman and claimed that he was being falsely implicated in the criminal case by the CBI.

In his bail application moved in the AP High Court on Tuesday, Raju said he was the chairman of Satyam Computer Services till January 7, 2009, "when he tendered his resignation." Further, he submitted to the court that he was falsely implicated as accused No 1 in the criminal case filed by the CBI and that the allegations made against him "are absolutely false and not supported by any credible evidence."

Completely denying the ‘confession' in which Raju himself had admitted to several irregularities, the accused No 1 in the Satyam scam is now turning the tables on the CBI and saying that all the charges levelled against him were cooked up by the investigating agency. "The allegations in the charge sheet are that cash and bank balances did not reflect the true state of affairs," Raju claims now, though it was he himself who had admitted to this in his January 2009 letter.

Raju also denied all the other charges made against him by the CBI based on his confession. They included inflation of sales by generating false invoices, floating of 327 companies, offloading of shares by the accused and other promoters of the company, inflated revenues, publication of falsified figures with respect to utilisation of employees on profitable projects, and that the auditors of the company conspired with the accused deliberately in violation of the auditing and assurance standards.

Former Satyam chairman also denied that there was a criminal breach of trust by him in the matter pertaining to the declaration and disbursement of dividends and that wrongful gain was made by the accused and wrongful loss suffered by investors in shares of the company. Further, he also denied that he and his family members had acquired huge assets during the period in which the accounting fraud was perpetrated.