India's Satyam founder guilty in fraud scandal

Mumbai - An Indian court this week pronounced the founder of Satyam Computer Services, Ramalinga Raju, guilty of forging documents and falsifying accounts, in the country's biggest-ever corporate accounting fraud.

A court in Hyderabad - the home city of what was once one of India's largest IT outsourcing companies - also found guilty Raju's brother and ex-Satyam managing director, B. Rama Raju, as well as eight other former Satyam executives, special public prosecutor K. Surender said.

The court sentenced Raju to seven years of imprisonment and fined him 2.5 million rupees ($40 180.01), local television reported.

Former founder and chairman Raju in 2009 said Satyam had overstated profits and falsified assets for years, in a fraud later determined to be $1.5bn in size.

Satyam was sold the same year to Indian software services company Tech Mahindra with which it later merged.