BANKRUPT BANKER
AFP: Court hears India's 'biggest corporate fraud' case: "disgraced founder of Indian outsourcing giant Satyam appeared in court Tuesday in a billion-dollar corporate fraud case dubbed 'India's Enron'.
The firm's founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju -- a one-time poster boy for Indian economic progress -- was present for a preliminary hearing in the southern city of Hyderabad.
His declaration in January 2009 that he had falsified profits plunged the Indian business world into turmoil.
The court on Tuesday issued summonses to a list of witnesses, Raju's lawyer, Bharat Kumar, told AFP.
Raju, who faces charges including conspiracy, cheating and forgery, declared in a letter of confession that he had overstated profits for years and inflated the company's balance sheet by more than a billion dollars.
He later backed down from the confession, but police maintain the letter was a 'voluntary disclosure of fraud'."
