Satyam appoints firms to check accounts

Ramalinga Raju

Deloitte and KPMG have been appointed by troubled Indian outsourcing giant Satyam to restate their accounts.

The two firms have won the work on an ‘ad hoc basis’ according to the board and there remains no announcement on the future of PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditor.

Board member Kiran karnak has been reported in the Indian press saying it would take an annual general meeting to formally change auditor.

Scandal hit Satyam last week when it chairman B.Ramalinga Raju admitted an accounting fraud estimated to be worth $1bn.

PwC yesterday formally acknowledged in a letter to the board that the firm’s audits of Satyam from June 2000 until September of last year could be relied upon.

Satyam also announced that it has begun a search for a new chief executive and head of finance following the resignations of CEO Rama Raju and CFO Srinivas Vadlamani.

PwC’s engagement partner for the last Satyam audit was Srinivas Talluri. Talluri has been with the company for 20, though he spent some time with Ernst & Young. It is understood he is still attending work but is almost exclusively engaged in cooperating with the various investigations that are currently underway. All previous audits were handled by S. Gopalakrishnan.

PwC has handed documents to the Indian police and has received a request from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in India as well as securities regulators.