Satyam's band of bottomline brothers

Durgashankar says the job was completed in time thanks to teamwork. Not just on the part of the company’s finance department, but that of various other departments like internal audit and IT, consultants like KPMG, various international and domestic legal advisors, and its statutory auditor. “The biggest credit goes to the Indian government, which swung into action immediately after the fraud came to light and asked people of eminence to revamp the company,” he adds.

The accounts rectification process involved identifying and fixing over 200,000 line adjustments covering over 300 types of accounts. Besides, over 7,000 contracts and 6,000 bank reconciliations were reviewed. The investigations not only identified the fraudulent transactions, but also unearthed how the fraud was perpetrated.

Despite the cumulative 100 man years of effort that has gone into the exercise already, Mahindra Satyam believes given the magnitude and complexity of the issues, it could take at least another 18 months to fix all the problems. So, for the band of bottomline brothers there is a fresh deadline looming: to publish financials for Q1 and Q2 of the current fiscal by November 15. That can only mean burning the midnight oil is far from over.

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