Price Waterhouse seeks extra time to respond ICAI notice

Price Waterhouse, the statutory auditors of the Rs 7,800-crore fraud hit Satyam Computer Services, has sought extra time to respond to the show cause notice sent to it by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) on January 10.Price Waterhouse, a part of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - one of the big four audit firms was given 21 days time to respond ICAI notice on the role of outside auditors in the whole episode of inflating the profit of the Hyderabad-based IT."Since accountable persons are not in a situation to reply to questions due to the developments, which took place in Hyderabad, Price Waterhouse has requested for extra time," said Ved Jain, president of ICAI while addressing the media. Under the rule (8) 3 of the ICAI act, ICAI might extend the time of responding to the show cause notice to 30 days.On being asked if ICAI would give the firm extra time, Jain replied that "the pinciple of natural justice is an inherent part of law under which such decisions are taken". He, however, added that the final decision would be taken by the director discipline.On January 24, two Price Waterhouse auditors were arrested by the Andhra Pradesh police for colluding with Ramalinga Raju in fudging the company's accounts. One of the auditors S Gopalakrishnan is a senior council member of ICAI while Srinivas Talluri is a member of ICAI.