The pressure is building on accounting firm Price Waterhouse
and the auditor may just be showing signs of buckling under pressure.
NDTV has learnt that Price Waterhouse may just close down its operations in Hyderabad, the city which has been the center of the Satyam storm.
Sources also suggest that employees at the Hyderabad office have been asked to disperse and even consider looking for other jobs.
The advisory comes as Price Waterhouse fears that its accounting practices on various client accounts will be put under the scanner.
Even former employees of PW are worried that they too may be called in for questioning by the Institute of Chartered Accountants
of India.
The nervousness comes even as Price Waterhouse tries to reduce its liability in the Rs 7,000 crore accounting fraud at Satyam Computer Services Ltd.
Sources at Price Waterhouse say that Satyam's accounts showed healthy balance till the 7th or 8th of each month.
The balance then fell sharply by the end of the month. The company explained this away as a normal business cycle where cash balances fell due to expenses between 8th and 28th of any month. However, fresh receivables only came in only after the 28th.
This was the argument pushed forth by Satyam's internal auditors that argument that Price Waterhouse bought month after month, allowing for Satyam's promoters to get away with a massive accounting scam.
Price Waterhouse now hopes that it will get away with a slap on the wrist for negligence, but it still remains unclear whether the auditors' role could have gone deeper than that.
CAclubindia
