2.0 Satyam Computer Services Before the Scandal
Satyam Computer Services Ltd was an information technology firm that was founded by Ramalinga Raju in Hyderabad, India in 1987 (“85 Satyam Computer Services"). Satyam was one of the big four in India’s large information technology outsourcing industry. Satyam is the Sanskrit word for truth ("Scandal at Satyam: Truth, Lies and Corporate Governance"). Originally, the company was divided into three sections namely; information technology (IT), Business Process Outsourcing, and the Software Products division (“85 Satyam Computer Services"). Satyam provided a wide range services such as; software development and engineering, transaction processing, human resource consultations and much more.
Satyam
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The head of the company, Ramalinga Raju and members of his family secured illegal gains worth about Rupees 2,743 through the application of numerous accounting ‘tricks’ and misrepresentations. This was primarily achieved through the exaggeration of actual revenue by the company with things such as false invoices, forged bank statements and the like. This, naturally, was done with the knowledge of the internal auditors. It has not been clearly established whether the then auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers were cognisant of what was happening. As a result of the inflated earnings, the stock process of Satyam shares went through a period of strong growth.
When these issues came to light, the chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd, Mr. Ramalinga Raju, admitted to the distortion and misrepresentation of the company’s revenues and assets. Additionally, he tendered his resignation from the company as he was the principal driving force behind the issues that were
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One of the largest cases of fraudulent financial reporting in India’s history is the Satyam scandal where the CEO of Satyam Computers Ramalinga Raju, revealed on January 7 2009 the company had been providing false financial statements. The management of Satyam had overstated the company profits by a huge amount of $1 billion over the years. The implications of this fraudulent reporting on the management of the company are as follows:
Ramalinga Raju, was previously the CEO of Satyam Computers was sentenced to 6 months of imprisonment
Additionally he was fined Rs.10.5 lakh by the Serious Frauds Investigations Office (SFIO)
His brother who previously occupied the position of managing director B. Rama Raju as well as Ram Mynampati who was previously a whole time director also received the same punishment.ie imprisonment for 6 months and a fine of Rs.10.5 lakh
Vadlamani Srinivas who was previously the chief financial officer of Satyam received a punishment of 6 months imprisonment and a total fine of
In this case, there are several conspirators who is involved in the fraud receiving punishment from either SEC or federal government. Robert Levin, the AMRE executive and major stockholder, and Dennie D.Brown, the company’s chief accounting officer, were subject to the punishment in the form of a huge amount of fine by the SEC and the federal government. This punishment came from reasons. After AMRE going public, the company have the obligation to publish its financial reports but its performance did not meet expectation. The investigation by SEC shows that Robert took the first step of this scam, fearing the sharp drop of AMRE’s stock price because of the poor performance of company. He abetted Brown, to practice three main schemes to present a false appearance of profitable and pleasant financial reports. Firstly, they instructed Walter W.Richardson, the company’s vice president of data processing, to enter fictitious unset leads in the lead bank and they originally deferred the advertising cost mutiplying “cost per lead” and “unset leads” amount, so that they deferred a portion of its advertising costs in an asset account. The capitalizing of advertising expenses allowed them to inflate the net income for the first quarter of fiscal 1988. Secondly, at the end of the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 1988, they added fictitious inventory to AMRE’s ending inventory records, and prepared bogus inventory count sheets for the auditors. Thirdly, they overstated the percentage
The one pattern within the data that appears to be inconsistent yet if the auditors had established an internal control systems would be Monus the founder moving so freely throughout every aspect of the company with no one checking his movements. From choosing what properties to purchase to purchasing supplies. In any company there should be segregation of duties. For example, the person making the deposits should not be the person writing the checks. Had there been stipulations made it would not have been so convenient to commit the
Issue: Have the directors of the company breached their duties mainly related to the company’s insolvent trading.
In addition, associated with the misapplication of accounting methods, the financial industry has been plagued with one disaster after another involving numerous scandals from top leading American companies. Consequently, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 compromising eleven sections that are generated to insure the responsibilities of the company’s managers and executives. This act identifies criminal penalties for particular unethical practices and currently has new policies that a corporation must follow in their financial reporting. The following examples describe some of biggest accounting methods as a result of the greed and the outrage of the ethical and financial misconduct by the senior management of public corporations.
Fraudulent financial reporting is one form of corporate corruption and may involve the manipulation of the documents used to record accounting transactions, the misrepresentation of accounting events or transactions, or the intentional misapplication of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (Crumbley, Heitger, and Smith, 2013). Examples of fraudulent schemes befitting of this category abound and usually involve financial statement items that have been misclassified, omitted, overstated, undervalued, or prematurely recognized. One case involving CEO Bill Smith of Moonstay
After reviewing the financial information of the Tech Tennis, USA, there was a concerned due to some unusual changes in the company’s accounts. Financial statements play a crucial part in the determination of the progress of an organization. It assists the relevant personnel to identify whether the company is making profits or making losses. Although unethical, some companies will tend to deliberately misrepresent some of their financial statement information to create a false impression of the company’s success. There are various techniques that organizations utilize to manipulate their financial statements such as overstating their revenues (Bierstaker, Brody, & Pacini, 2006). In addition, some organization will tend to inflate their sales without considering their cash flow amount that the organization has acquired which will be a red flag to investigate. Consequently, financial statements provide vital information that helps both internal and external users to understand the position of the organization. Some companies in an attempt to continue in the market, they end up manipulating their financial statements that create an illusion of the success of the organization.
Since their prices were way too low, eventually profit margins began to decline very fast, this resulted in millions of losses. Instead of disclosing and recording these losses, President Monus along with the CFO Pat Finn and two other high ranking officials, decided to cross out the correct numbers insert highly inflated numbers, during this a sub ledger with the real numbers was also being kept. After a few months of this practice Pat Finn the CFO took on the responsibility of altering the numbers. By mid 1990 Monus's refusal to raise prices led to even more cover ups and eventually more members of the organization began to get involved in the fake reporting including the manager of accounting and the Controller. By the time the fraud was discovered executives at Phar-Mor had misstated financial statements by over $500 million.
In the later part of 1990s, there was an epidemic of accounting scandals which arose with the disclosure of financials transgressions by trusted corporate executives. The misdeeds involved misusing or misdirecting funds, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets or underreporting the existence of liabilities, and overstating of revenues.
Unfortunately, all those efforts have not been vindicated because of the following reasons: Accounting did not cause the recent corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom. Unreliable financial statements were the results of management decisions, fraudulent or otherwise. To blame management’s misdeeds on fraudulent financial statements casts accountants as the scapegoats and misses the real issue. Reliable financial reports rely to a certain extent on effective internal controls, but effective internal controls rely to a large extent on a reliable management system coupled with strong corporate governance. when management deliberately or even unlawfully manipulates business processes in order to achieve desirable financial goals and present untruthful financial reports to the public, accounting systems are abused and victims rather than perpetrators.
This subject company in this case study is WoolEx Mills. The top management team at the Mills had to act fast to prevent the accusations charged upon them, so that they may venture deep into the United States market. In the process, they had to act in a way that will present the company’s financial statements; cash flows in a way that they did not show any suspicious fraudulent activities. The type of fraud in this case study is known as manipulation of accounts which involves the act of offering the accounts in the way they are not in reality.
The auditing firm has been in engagement with the company throughout the period when the fraud was being committed. One of the common and clear indicators of possible fraud was the company’s cash flow statement. The company experienced positive growth in its profits from the year 1996 through to the year 1998. However, a close analysis of the cash flow statement shows that the company had experienced negative figures of cash flow from both operating and investing activities and positive cash flow from financing activities which would not sufficiently offset the negative cash flows from operating and investing. It is therefore evident
o The auditors should have done further testing should have been performed to discover the
TCS was a division to service electronic data processing (EDP) at first there requirement was to provide management consulting services at first when it was established. In 1971, they got their first international assignment. In 1981, company set up its first R&D division in India called Tata Research Design and Development Centre at Pune. In 1985, first client-dedicated offshore development center for Compaq (then Tandem) was setup. In 1989, they provided electronic depository and trading system called ‘SECOM’ for a company ‘SIS SegaInterSettle’, Switzerland. In 1997, they setup their new corporate training facility at Trivandrum to give training to their employees. In 1998, they ventured into
This research paper will explore the fraud at Tyco and focus primarily on accounting and auditing issues related to the fraud. One thing worth noting about this case is that fraudulent financial reporting was not at the core of the fraud, which was the case with majority other big frauds at the time, such as Enron and Waste Management. On the contrary, fraud consisted of misappropriation of assets, and fraudulent financial reporting came as a consequence of trying to hide misappropriation of assets and the use of corporate money for personal benefit.
This paper will discuss the corporation WorldCom, a telecommunications company that was based in Mississippi. In 2002 WorldCom was involved in one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. WorldCom inflated its assets by nearly $11 billion dollars, which eventually lead to about 30,000 employees losing their jobs, as well as, 180-billion dollars in losses for its investors. The CEO at the time of this accounting fraud was Bernard Ebbers and led to him receiving a 25-year prison sentence. This paper will go into the details of how WorldCom was able to manipulate its accounting records to deceive its internal auditors, as well as, investors.