KONDAVEETI DONGA writes from Cyberabad (with tongue firmly in cheek): Any dongamama who masterminds a scam and other such adventures to look good in the eyes of the world knows that his (her?) luck will run out, later if not sooner.
When Byrajju Ramalinga Raju (in picture, right) was pressure-cooking the PowerPoint at Satyam™ over the years, he would have definitely known that the broth would brim over one day. But surely it is not unreasonable to presume that the Telugu bidda would have also drafted a plan to protect him if the shittulu hit the ceilingulu?
The belief that the disgraced entrepreneur must have had a survival plan stems from one small piece of trivia: Raju signed and sent his confessional letter on January 7 in electronic form. Yes, it is said to have come from his email ID but is that signature really Raju’s? Is there a hard-copy letter with SEBI, BSE or NSE? Will it stand the test of the long legal arm in a court of law?
Why this sudden doubtulu?
While he painted himself as an ‘honest guy’ while admitting to the fraud, taking all the blame on himself and subjecting himself to the law, it slowly turns out that, in the best traditions of cost-cutting in these recessionary times, l’il Raju was being economical with the truthulu.
He claimed that he took no money himself, now it is almost evident that he systematically siphoned off obscene amounts of cash, drawing the salaries of thousands of employees who only existed on his rolls. He claimed the money had not been diverted, but it turns out it was used to buy up land, etc.
So, if he lied about his people, what won’t he lie about?
Looking at the way the investigation is going about, it is reasonable to presume that the whole drama of the confession, the arrest, the stonewalling, etc, was predesigned to minimise the impact. And that he also has a water-tight survival plan in place to walk out, later if not sooner.
What it could be?
We can only speculate, with a couple of scotches tinkling in our drawing rooms (and with our tongue still firmly in our cheek).
Possibility 1: ‘Main na hoon‘
Have the police arrested the real Ramalinga Raju? How can we be so sure that it isn’t a a lookalike who has surrendered to the police? With all attention on the Fake Raju, could Original Ramalinga Raju be elsewhere, enjoying his biryani and pesarattu as it unfolds? This possibility isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Several world leaders who feared a threat to their lives—Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein to name just two—were known to employ this ploy. What if some Telugu film producer or director, with their sophisticated sense of reality, has not done the needful and supplied a “double”?
Possibility 2: “Dubai se phone aaya“
Can Raju claim that he never sent the letter and someone else did it by hacking into his account, or that someone else (the real estate/ land mafia, maybe; maybe politicians; maybe FIIs) coerced him? Since so much time has elapsed since the confession, is it impossible that critical documents have been destroyed, ensuring that investigating agencies fail to prove him guilty? Is everything all designed by his lawyers and clansmen to ensure he walks away scot-free? What if he says like the extortionist says in Ramgopal Varma‘s Satya: “Dubai se phone aaya.”
Possibility 3: All in the family
What if the Raju clan converges this Sunday afternoon for a gunta ponganalu brunch and decides enough is enough, the family name is being besmirched, and decrees that the 70 top Rajus in Andhra Pradesh shall each write a cheque for Rs 100 crore each to rescue one of their own? Or else. Or if all the seven crore Telugus across the world, chip in with Rs 1,000 each against which they will be issued tea sops that can be encashed at a future date in the Satyam canteen? Or else.
Of course, the best case scenario is that Raju will be proved guilty, that he will pay a fine of Rs 21 crore and spend 7-10 years in jail in repentence for what he did. Maybe, if his behaviour is good, or his (genuine) doctor finds some serious ailment, the term could be cut short by a few years. Since maavadu is just 54, there will be a few years to enjoy the remainder of his life.
What do you think? What excuses and alibis could the conman and his lawyers come up with?
By the way, if Mohammed Ajmal Kasab should not get a lawyer for having gunned down a few in VT on November 26, should Ramalinga Raju get a lawyer (or 22) for having taken hundreds of clients, thousands of employees, and millions of shareholders for a ride?
Just kidding.
Happy Republic Day.
Photograph: courtesy The Hindu Business Line
I suppose you mean “scot free”, not “scotch free”.
Think of Harshad Shantilal Mehta. Till he died, he was embroiled in litigation. Donga Raju will be worse off. He has committed so many offences, that he cannot walk scot free out of all the proceedings. For example, by inflating employees figures by over 12000, he has booked their salaries as expenses and claimed income tax deduction for several years. This fictitious salary would perhaps amount to couple of thousand crores during the past seven or eight years. Imagine the tax liability on such sum at the rate of 30% plus 3% cess, plus surcharge of 10%! Nodoubt, demand will be on the company. But, as master mind of the evasion, he is sure to face prosecution. I would rather not count number of other laws under which he can be prosecuted, SEBI, Companies Act, just to name two more.
no wonder if it happens. so long he enjoys the support of politicians
No doubt, there are laws, acts etc to punish the guilty. First, yu must prove it beyond all easonable doubt. Then only punishment can be awarded.. It is a process, judicial process involving many steps and to cross the hurdles and nail the culprit , it is not that easy, by that time , Raju may be 65 or 75 by which time majority of the people will have forgotten about the Sathyam. Anritha meva jayate, na satyam.
Nothing surprising! He will enter politics as any other Bandit and criminal, where you get pardon for all your past deeds and convert all black to white. Safer than Heaven.
Beautifulu! A masterpiece if churumuri ever carried one.
Dongulu ka my namaskarulu.
While I have nothing to comment about the main story, the last paragraph where the author makes a casual remark “having gunned down a few in VT” is in very poor state and doesn’t show any sensitivity towards the lives lost. Does the fifty six innocent lives that were lost at VT on 26th can be just clumped together with no regard to describe an unrelated activity ?
At least I thought before posting this article the editor/maintainer of this blog would have shown some discretion by doing a bit of editing on the last paragraph. Or is it I am overreacting ?
Satyam’s case is neither the first one in India nor will be the last one. This kind of thing happens in all countries (developed or not). But why would anyone need to link up a terrorist act with a financial fraud ?
Rajugaru,ReddyGaru,Kammavaaru, Kaapuvaaru all Dongalu .
These guys are master of new schemes .
Mine Business , IT Business, Construction Business ( Incl Yesterday Bridge Collapse ) , Poultry Business , Civil Service exams, Gate Exams , IT Interviews Scam , H1B Scam , Bench Payment Scam (US) , Illegal Immigration Scam to UK,Malaysia,Singapore,US scams , Shrimp Business Scams , Granite Scams , Chit Fund Scams ( remember VINI VINK Shastry from Vijayawada )…whew the List is endless .
The reddy brothers are ready to scam the people of Karnataka and the Government as a whole .
Is the BJP government or the Future of Karnataka politics headed for a Major national SCAM/SHAME ?????
Brilliant!!
But yes, I hope to see him run from court to jail and jail to court, losing all his money, property and hair in the process, until his eventual death.
My strongest hope lies, not with the prosecution, but with the defence lawyers who are possibly “redsitributing” among themselves the no doubt vast sums Raju stole. One can only hope that their greed knows no bounds, and that they will not bring an end to the litigation until Raju or his money is exhausted.
A charming piece by Donga garu.
Its kind of illogical that top lawyers surround a bankrupt Raju . Surely they are not apprehensive about payment of their ‘sky rocketing’ legal fees. Wonder who is standing as Raju’s gurrantor if the government is not going to pay and all of Raju’s & his family’s personal assets are seized ? In that context ‘Dubai se phone aaya’ sounds the best possibility.
DG, upon reading the post i wondered if you might be the author!
The plot seems to come straight out of a Stephen Fleming’s masterpieces – I am sure, Churumuri can claim royalty when RamGopal Verma makes a new movie with Chiru as the lead (Ramalinga Raju), Balakrishna as his brother (Rama Raju), Jr. NTR playing the role of Teja Raju and Prime Investigator of CID role being played by the best actor of the lot in Andhrapradesh – YSR!!
Now the question is, who will play the role of CM? Thoughts, comments?
I was right in my very first comment on Churumui after Raju story broke out. He simply siphoned off money. .All that tamasha about confession letter was as some one pointed out a “red herring”.
SEBI need not wait for all the accounting to get over before charging Rama Linga Raju.. As CNN pointed out Raju lied when he said he was organizing a board meeting to consider Share buyback. He knew very well that there was no money. Kenneth Lay had to put a bullet in his head for lying that Enron was going to be OK after he took over from Skillings after the Enron scandal. Such should be the punishment for lying. And no detailed investigation is needed. That is a open and shut case. Once Raju is behind bars on the lying case. Agencies can investigate for years to get to the bottom of the other scams namely.. cooking of books. forgery of bank certificates, bribery, impersonation of 10000 employees with fake PAN numbers and so on!!!
By the way, the grand standing done by some well wishers of Raju needs to be exposed. The ramalingaraju.com was registered by one from the Raju clan itself!!
BTW Raju said he put his money in Satyam and now he is pauper. Then how come he is able to finance 20 odd lawyers. Now all the assets are ceased what is source of funding for Raju. Investigate that and jail all those lawyers for taking black money!!!
Raju can depend on public defender during trial.
You know another secret…Other luminary of India Shining Dr Reddy Laboratories piracy shop and Raju angadi are related in fraud. Palepu serves as another independent director at DRL. Palepu should be jailed.. ADR investors . you do not have to wait for SEBI to get to Ramalinga raju..Shake Palepu who is right here in US.
Palepu’s slideware for his corporate governance classes are now available at http://www.slideshare.net/nasscom/how-to-make-corporate-board-more-effective-prof-krishna-g-palepuharvard-business-school
See how he advises at least four board meetings before strategic shift each focusing on customer , competition, capability and risk!! Wah Wah.. You forgot that when you made yourself a mute spectator when Satyam tried to invert its strategy in one meeting. Now you claim you are innocent and did your duties fully and effectively!!!
I know you sucked golden pee cock of raju. Palepu you are a disgrace to academic community
What a naive question? It should be when he will be …., not what if. There is no question of what if in our system. Just employ some aggressive lawyer, play innocent for some time, accuse victimisation for some time, apply delaying tactics, feign ignorance, declare different ailments especially, heartaches (self, not that of shareholders or employees), join a political party (any), contest an election, shed lot of tears and cry repentance, write a book….. In due course, you will be honourable aquitted, people will forgive and you can live happily ever after with all the money stashed away! Very simple.
He is actually quite smart. Indian system is not used to dealing with people who admit guilt.
He has admitted guilt for soemthing that is not the truth. Now it will take a lot of effort from investigators to find out what he has actually done. IN all probability he has siphoned off the money.
He’ll let the whole case get stuck in a legal mire and let the judicial process drag on.
The legal luminaries who are representing the accused in these cases, they say so, are doing/rendering their services free of cost. They have a commitment. Leet us nopt presume all work for money alone, there may be other considerations also. They are like our doctors who go to the houses of the rich and serve them. May their tribe increase! One day or other Rajus become rajas. Yendaro mahanubhaavaulu andariki vandanamu….
All corporations should be subject to total public scrutiny. Perhaps scams like this remind people why worker control of the workplace is not such a bad idea. Capitalism always produces such frauds and exploiters.
The site ramalingaraju.com was hosted by alster.in. This is spyware site reportedly stolen private information from the west.
One Raju hosted that business.
His address is
Registrant:
N/A
Ramaraju Kanumuri (ramaraju@dr.com)
C 401 APARNA HEIGHTS, Near CHIREC Public School, KONDAPUR
Hyderabad
Andhra Pradesh,500082
IN
Tel. +91.9440888888
I have great doubts on ICICI Bank .There is no Transparency in their operations .I always feel it is a bank run by ‘Meesa Baradha Hudugaru’ .
This bank which has like 54K crores deposits might one day close its shop.
Are the deposits in the BANK RBI insured like FDIC insured in US (upto 250K USD) ?? Big Question .
Their Currency conversion is another major scam when NRI transfer the Money into their NRE accounts .
***
BTW I had opened a blog about DONGA COMPANY a few years back and would like to revive that. I want to open the blog roll with Satyam
DG let us know the donga company blog.. I want to contribute about HCL and murthy angadi there
Banks in india are insured similar to FDI. I think it is called depositor insurance and credit guarantee corporation or something.. Deposits in banks are guaranteed uptp INR 100000.
All our banking system is copied from West. But unlike the banks in West. India still has not opened to “innovation” that brought down banks in the west. Banks in India are safer than banks in west.
YSR has prove that they are involved in the Satyam’s scam. Because, they want to divert the media’s and people’s attention from the scam, they are targeting Heritage Foods of CBN with their newspaper.
While it is no wrong to report the news about CBN, why was their newspaper not having any stories on Satyam’s scam?
“By the way, if Mohammed Ajmal Kasab should not get a lawyer for having gunned down a few in VT on November 26, should Ramalinga Raju get a lawyer (or 22) for having taken hundreds of clients, thousands of employees, and millions of shareholders for a ride?”
As a former criminal defense lawyer, I am alarmed at the way the Indian bar decides not to represent people like Kasab. Everybody deserves a lawyer – Kasab, Raju etc. When “important” lawyers make these kind of statements it really makes me cringe. Selective, sliding scale application of the law in every way shape and form – well its India right and thats how its always been too right!
Farah – “well its India right and thats how its always been too right!”
– If this remark invites scorn, that would be well deserved. I’m with you on “principle”, but not on the “lecture” on India. Under the circumstances, this country has been only too civilized.
I dont understand the reasoning behind all these comments on Raju. Everyone is taken for a ride by, once again, political parties who have used Mr.Raju to bring the money through the company in the guise of remittances on a/c of supply of software. Did any of you know that just sending a nursery rhymes in digital format is also can be termed as export of softwares? Only thing is it has to be done through STPs. So to please your political bosses atmost what you have to do is to have a sham company sitting in tax heavens which buys your shit as software and remit the money through regular channels and it will get covered under exempt clauses of Income Tax Act, which has once again been framed by the political bosses. Once tha money comes in you may have to pay at the demand of political bosses whenever there are elections or forming of Govts through buying opp. MLAs. So when the money is paid without booking the payments it results in fake assets as cash balances which will taken as true at the time of audit on the basis of a certificate of the prop. or partner or director of the company as correct. And there is no possibility of Income tax department examining the same as it will assess the return of income only after minimum of 2 years after the date of completion of the financial year also there is no such system where the income tax officer will sit and count your cash to see the veracity of cash balance as per books except at the time of search. So becuase of payments of cash to poilitical bosses without passing the same through books will result in bogus cash balances, which will come to light one or the other day. To overcome this, Raju wanted to buy Maytas, a peanut company, for a huge price so that all that deficit in cash could have been settled. The real culprit in this episode is once again our political practitioner who has taken advantage of the law made by him and used the co. like Satyam. Whereas most of us are getting carried away by the media reports showcasing Mr. Raju is the only culprit in the episode. Please rethink.
do u think that telugus are only 7 crores across the world, just wake up and know the facts seriously. we are around 15 crores worldwide