Satyam And The Art Of Burying A Scandal by R Jagannathan

The country’s most shocking terrorist outrage — 26/11 — has resulted in a conviction in 18 months. The country’s biggest corporate scandal — the Rs 7,000-and-odd crore Satyam fraud — hasn’t even got to the trial stage during the same timespan. And this, when the prime accused, B Ramalinga Raju, started it all with a confession.

What does this say about our political-executive-judicial system? Simple: justice happens only when the politicians will it. 26/11 is on its way to making legal history because the entire political system wanted a verdict. Satyam is not going anywhere because the system is in cahoots with the accused.

In fact, the Satyam scandal is probably well on its way to being buried. All the accused, barring the principal one, are out on bail. As for Ramalinga Raju — the self-confessed fraudster — he is now ready to twist the knife in the systemic wound by not only asking for bail but by preparing the grounds for a complete recant.

Reports from Hyderabad suggest that Raju’s legal team has now shifted gears from a resigned “mea culpa” to a cautiously offensive stand where he no longer may stand by his confession of January 7, 2009. The new line of argument — which makes a mockery of all our investigating agencies and our judicial system — is that the confession was not an admission of guilt, but merely a statement of moral responsibility.

If the courts accept this argument, Raju would have made monkeys out of all of us. Let’s see why. If Raju is only taking moral responsibility, the crime was done by other people under him, who were offered bail a few days ago. If they are the ones who did the dirty on Satyam shareholders, Raju should have squarely accused them of skulduggery and turned approver. If, on the other hand, they were doing all this at the urgings of Raju, both should be nailed. The only plausible conclusion is that they are all guilty and in league with one another to bail themselves out. They have decided to hang together and take their chances with the courts rather than cooperate with the CBI and hang separately.

This is not to say that the courts and investigating agencies are going to let Raju get away all that easily. But the reverse cannot be assumed too, given the sheer tardiness with which the Special Frauds Investigation Office, the CBI and the Andhra Pradesh CID have handled an open-and-shut case so far.

That the political system was, from the outset, determined to thwart justice was apparent from day one. It took the Andhra police two days after the whole world heard about the Raju confession to arrest him. But even this arrest was made to prevent other, more diligent, agencies like Sebi from getting hold of Raju and shaking something damaging out of him.

It is obvious that Sebi, which is the market regulator, would have known what to ask and where to look, since the primary confession of Raju was about fudged accounts and cheating investors. But the Andhra CID was given first crack at him, possibly for the simple reason that it was directly under the thumb of guilty politicians.

Given the sheer amount of government contracts given to Raju’s other company Maytas, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that Satyam’s fraud and Maytas’ Andhra government linkages had a symbiotic connection. It is also well known in Andhra that chief minister YS Rajashekhara Reddy (YSR, who was later killed in a helicopter crash) lobbied hard with Delhi to ensure that nothing damaging emerged before the 2009 general elections. As the Congress’ most powerful chief minister, YSR got his way. This is the main reason why even though little progress has been made in the case against Raju and the other accused, the government happily sold off Satyam to the Mahindras and Maytas too was packed off to IL&FS. In short, the government moved expeditiously to get the company’s future sorted out since thousands of jobs were involved and India’s IT reputation was at stake. But we have seen little progress in the prosecution of Raju & Co.

In theory, Raju has already spent more than 18 months in jail. But he has managed to get himself into a hospital for large stretches of time, ostensibly for hepatitis C treatment. He has been stonewalling the CBI’s efforts to meet him and record his formal statement on the scandal. The judiciary has not covered itself with glory by allowing this to happen.

The Ajmal Kasab trial went like a breeze because judge ML Tahaliyani gave the defence no chance to sabotage it with delaying tactics. Sadly, the Andhra courts have not shown the same sense of urgency to prosecute the country’s biggest fraudster to date. Though Raju is supposed to be tried by a fast-track court, the road to trial is a slow, dirt-track.