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PwC Auditors Arrested In Satyam Fraud Inquiry
theodp writes "Indian police arrested two employees from the affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers who audited Satyam Computer Services, the IT outsourcing giant at the center of the nation's largest fraud inquiry. The move comes after Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju said he had fabricated $1 billion of assets and confessed to making up more than 10,000 employees to siphon money from the software company. State Farm Insurance has severed its ties with Satyam, citing uncertainty about the company's future as 'the only factor responsible for the termination of the contract,' which will reportedly affect at least 400 on-site Satyam employees. Other customers, including GE, are standing by Satyam, one of the top recipients of H-1B and L visas (so much for those $500 Fraud Prevention and Detection fees!)."
Pricewaterhouse Coopers is a huge company and actually audits 40 percent of companies in the FTSE 100 Index. They audit everyone from aerospace & defence contractors to general retailers and chemical goods manufacturers. Scary news.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
I work for GE. GE is hardly standing by Satyam. We need proof of breach of contract before we can legally severe ties. Give the lawyers a bit of time and it will happen.
Well you might be pleased to know that your reputation amongst IT engineers is already shredded due to the sheer number of underqualified, incompetent IT 'professionals' who simply lie about what they know / do not know, and / or are pure paper test passers.
I have met many brilliant Indian IT techs, and for every one I meet, they have ten incompetent comrades (and I'm not talking about the language barrier).
Having been on both sides of the fence (i.e. lost my job to an Indian outsourcer, gained a fat short term contract implementing such outsourcing) its patently clear that the issues lie with the Indian outsourcing execs who promise the world knowing (or do they really not know, being pointy haired bosses and all?) that they can't deliver the quality of service they promise. Of course the underqualified sods they send into the front line bear the brunt of the customers' angst. I could launch into my amateur sociological observations backed up with pure anecdotal evidence but thats treading into potentially dangerous grounds lol
If I have to explain IIS error codes to another .Net dev from Bangalore I will seriously go postal - for the last time, a 5xx error means its coming from the remote server goddammit - think about what that means (I'm a cisco techie, and such is the level of questions I have to fend off everyday from the outsourced areas).
Oh yes and explain to me why I see Indian CCNPs googling 'routing' and unable to answer simple queries re: spanning tree and OSPF. I have personally seen an Indian CCNP unable to locate the console port on a switch (hint: its at the back, not the front like a router). Oh the hilarity.... and how about when their senior dev asks me 'but network is down from X to Y', I RDP from server X to server Y, and he replies 'what does that prove'....
Sorry to go off on a bit of a rant here, but Satyam are at my work and boy does their incompetence rankle me. But as I said I've seen it before and I'm sure I'll see it again. Until they can actually deliver what is being promised their reputations (amongst the engineers at least) will always be deservedly tarnished.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is not actually a company. They are a network of partnerships across the globe that utilize each other to perform global audits. Just because one office is crooked doesn't mean that it is true in another office, as each one is managed by a separate partner who makes their own choices regarding how to run the office (in this case crooked as hell).
Having multiple currencies with floating exchange markets has a very, very important advantage: it helps to moderate the impact of inflation in one country on trading partners.
If you choose to have a single currency, you need to set a single supply regime. But what happens if one part of your economy needs cheap and easy money because it's stagnating, while another part needs its money supply tightened to avoid runaway inflation? It can't be done, you're screwed both ways.
Australia had this recently in the gap between New South Wales, the most populated state, which was stagnant, and Western Australia, much more lightly populated but in the midst of a mining boom. Our Reserve Bank chose to fight inflation. Now they're fighting recession. But either way the impact of their policies is uneven within a single currency.
The EU has a similar problem in the Eurozone. What is good for Germany can be bad for Spain, what is good for Greece can be terrible for France. With floating currencies each country can determine its own settings and the market will, more or less, adjust for it.
Of course the total dominance of the US Dollar means that we're all affected by Federal Reserve policy whether we like it or not, but some of the effect is soaked up in exchange rates. Until the crisis hit and everyone fled for US Treasury bonds, the US dollar was falling like a stone because it was too abundantly created by the Fed, which was driving up other currencies. The inflation in prices for US goods was offset by the increase in the price of other currencies.
The above analysis roughly holds in normal conditions. But these aren't normal conditions.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
I happen to be a Satyam employee and let me give you a clear picture on this entire story till now
1. Investigation is still going on the details of the fraud. There is still no clue on the missing cash and where did it go. The current numbers are just from the arrested's (Raju, Founder) mouth which cannot be trusted.
2. Within 5 days of scam the govt had stepped in. appointed new directors. Directors appointed audit and 2 new accounting firms to do complete audit of company from 2001. The 8 week audit will give a clear picture of the fraud numbers.
They are also hunting for new CEO and CFO. Even in US corporates are happy the way indian govt and intervened.
3. US employees have been paid their Jan month Salary. Indian employees wait for theirs and it will be announced next week (In India we get have monthly pay cycle)
4. The founder and his brother and CFO were arrested in 4 days after founder confessed to the scam. He is in an ordinary Jail along with his bro and CFO. Multiple agencies: SEBI, CID, CB-CID, CBI are investigating the case.
5. The lack of 10K employees is a baseless argument. Its currently under investigation though. One of the directors has also agreed that the 53K employee strength is true (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/01/26/stories/2009012651330100.htm)
6. Satyam like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys and other multitude companies operate on the outsourcing model. The working culture, people, environment and pay scale is extremely well compared to other indian jobs. Due to this indians are very professional, well mannered and living a better lifestyle. They have absorbed the american culture completely. Indian IT also has reflected into other industries with better pays and more professionalism and higher ambitions which is fueling india's growth.
This FSCK up is due to a bunch of family greed.
7. Many clients have shown support. They have personally called up project teams and shown support. People working on projects are continuing with their deliverables though the morale has fallen a little.
8. We have daily global calls where the entire company is addressed with the progress of company's future.
9. There are tons and tons of rumors flying around. I would suggest to wait and watch few weeks till all the investigation results comes out.