CBI chargesheet against Satyam's Raju on April 9

New Delhi: Beginning the trial in the multi-core Satyam accounting scam case, the CBI will file its chargesheet against B Ramalinga Raju and other accused on

April 9.

“We will be filing a chargesheet on April 9 but the investigations into the case would continue even after that,” CBI Director Ashwani Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of the 10th D P Kohli Memorial lecture here.

The CBI's filing the chargesheet will block the chances of Raju securing bail from the court. After arresting an accused, the prosecuting agency has to file a charge-sheet within 90 days to prevent the accused from getting the bail.

The CBI director said the confession made by Raju would also form a part of evidence in the chargesheet.

“He has given this statement to the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and it will be treated as his confession,” the CBI Director said.

The CBI is also preparing Letters Rogatory in regard to the Satyam probe, which would be sent to a number of countries seeking information on financial transactions by the firm and Raju, besides his family, sources said.

The agency, which set up a multi-disciplinary investigation team, including officials from the Income-Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, RBI, among others, claimed that the money involved in the scam was nearly Rs 10,000 crore, more than what was stated by Raju in January.

The CBI contended that it wanted to compare handwriting on forged documents recovered by the agency during the probe.

Sources said the agency retrieved over 7,000 fake invoices and forged documents showing fixed deposits and bank balances and their evaluation shows that the size of the scam is over Rs 9,600 crore.

The agency has also seized 50 trunk-loads of documents, besides digital records including pen-drives containing several megabytes of data.

The investigators have found that 327 companies were floated by the Raju brothers and ex-CFO Vadlamani Srinivas with 50-60 companies having the same address.

The CBI is also looking at the role of front companies in rotating funds, the sources said, adding that the conduct of the regulators is also being investigated and, if need be, some officials may be probed.

CBI Custody of Rajus extended

Meanwhile, a local court in Hyderabad, on Thursday further extended by another 14 days the judicial remand of Satyam's former Chairman B Ramalinga Raju and four other accused in the Rs 7,800-crore Satyam fraud case.

The XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate extended the judicial remand of Raju brothers, Satyam's former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas and former auditors of Price Waterhouse S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas till April 15.

The disgraced Satyam Computer's founder Raju is in judicial remand since January 10 following his confession regarding fudging of account books of the IT major.