Satyam faces claims worth Rs 10,000 cr

Thursday 11 June, 2009.

Satyam faces claims worth Rs 10,000 cr

Euphoria over the Rs 181 crore net profit in October-December 2008 notwithstanding, Satyam is still not out of the woods as it faces legal and other claims that could put a burden of up to Rs 10,000 crore on it.

These include claims worth about Rs 400 crore related to four overseas acquisitions made under the leadership of its disgraced founder B Ramalinga Raju and a demand of about Rs 1,230 crore from as many as 37 'unacknowledged' creditors.

Besides, there is a one billion dollar long-running fraud litigation with British firm Upaid and the class action lawsuits filed by its US shareholders over the multi-crore

financial scam at the company, with an estimated demand of another one billion dollar.

Except for Upaid case, all the other claims surfaced after the disclosure about massive financial irregularities at the company by Raju on January 7, 2009.

Satyam is trying to settle amicably some of these claims, while it intends to "vigorously defend" the class action law suits filed against the IT firm in the US and also the case filed by British mobile service firm Upaid in a Texas court.

At the same time, the claims made by 37 companies for a total of Rs 1,230 crore remains unacknowledged by Satyam.

The disclosure about these claims coincided with the company announcing a surprise profit of Rs 181 crore on stand-alone basis and Rs 160 crore on consolidated basis for the October-December 2008 quarter, and a further Rs 56 crore for the January-February period this year.