11 Jan 2009, 0536 hrs IST,TNN
NEW DELHI:
Registrar of Companies, Sebi, Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), Criminal Laws and Civil Laws, Class Action Suits are chasing
Ramalinga Raju, the beleaguered former chairman of Satyam Computer Services. "RoC officials have seized all records so that they are not tampered with. Sebi officials, too, have access to the same and they have also seized them," a Satyam source told TOI.
What next? Well, RoC will have to wait for instruction or arrival of crack team either from Chennai (which is the southern headquarters of department of company affairs) or from Delhi, while Sebi will wait for specialists from Mumbai.
The issue gets knotty here. While DCA is under the purview of ministry of corporate affairs, Sebi, on the other hand, comes under the finance ministry. Adding twist is the third agency SFIO, which comes under corporate affairs ministry.
According to company law practioners, the first step has been taken by the police who will follow the Indian Penal Code. The next would be what Sebi finds out in the probe as also the DCA through RoC.
"After their findings they will have to charge him and as they say, law will take its course. In the interim, if any investor files cases in any of the several thousand courts across the country, the issue gets that much complicated and therefore delayed. Since this is the first major case coming after SFIO has been constituted, let's see how government moves around the circles the legal set-up has created," V Vaitheeswaran, a corporate lawyer, told TOI.
Going by the sheer multiplicity of agencies and ministries involved in the investigation, it looks like Ramalinga Raju is clearly headed for a long-drawn legal battle before arriving at any conviction.
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Tags : Criminal Law
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