Ramalinga Raju, former chairman of Satyam Computers, who last year confessed to have inflated his company’s assets by over $1 billion, has been declared a pauper by a court here exempting him from paying court costs.

New York judge Barabara S Jones approved ‘pauper’ status for Raju, his brother Rama Raju, Satyam’s former chief executive officer, and Srinivas Vadlamani, the company’s former head of finance.

In October 2009, the defendants filed an “in forma pauperis” and for the appointment for a pro bono counsel.

According to court documents, the accused stated they are “unable to engage an attorney in the US to defend (themselves) in the class action litigation and to pay any court fees or to meet any financial obligations which might be imposed by this court”.

“The court finds that defendants have adequately demonstrated that they are unable to pay costs as described in the federal law,” US District Judge Jones said.

The judge however denied the request for a pro bono counsel as the “defendants are incarcerated in a foreign country and it would be unusually difficult for the appointed counsel to meet and otherwise competently represent Defendants under the circumstances”.

On 7 January 2009, Raju, 55, admitted that Satyam’s accounts had been falsified by over $1 billion, in what became India’s largest corporate scandal.

In November, the CBI said that fraud was 40 per cent larger than originally estimated. The former CEO of Satyam is being held in India.

“It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten,” he said, after the scandal broke. The IT company was taken over by Tech Mahindra.

The Kolkata operation of Tech Mahindra (TechM), the telecom software arm of the Mahindra Group, is picking up steam. The company’s 1,000-member Kolkata team has just been asked to execute a string of mega telecom outsourcing contracts for South Africa’s MTN, UAE’s Etisalat and Saudi Telecom, a senior official familiar with the matter told Neytri.

Not only is TechM developing advanced business intelligence solutions for MTN’s Nigerian operation out of Kolkata, it is also doing a sizeable chunk of the systems integration work for Etisalat and Saudi Telecom’s greenfield rollouts in India and Bahrain, respectively.

“Since the rollout of any greenfield mobile network involves installation of diverse network equipment and business support systems procured from multiple vendors, systems integration is a critical exercise. That is what Tech Mahindra is doing for Etisalat and Saudi Telecom through its delivery centres like the one in Kolkata,” said a source close to developments.

Mum’s the word at Tech Mahindra on the Etisalat, Saudi Telecom and MTN outsourcing deals being implemented by the Kolkata team. In response to Neytri’s email query on the details of these contracts, a Tech Mahindra spokesman wrote back: “As a company policy, we do not comment on client information or market speculation.”

Be that as it may, the latest developments come at a time when Tech Mahindra is ramping up its Kolkata operation in a big way. Indications are that the company’s upcoming 12-acre campus in the Bantala IT SEZ in the city’s eastern fringes will house the operations of its IT/telecom software development delivery centre and its BPO unit. Close to 2,000 IT professionals will initially work at this campus that is slated to become operational by December 2010. Once fully ramped up, it will be equipped to hold close to 4000 professionals.

At present, Tech Mahindra’s IT services and BPO operations happen out of separate facilities in the city. What is, however, not known is whether its Bantala SEZ will also house the city operations of Mahindra Satyam. Tech Mahindra recently surrendered the 2.77-acre plot that was alloted by the West Bengal government to Satyam Computers for a software development facility at Salt Lake Sector V, which never happened.

“Tech Mahindra, which now owns Satyam Computer, has decided to surrender the 2.77-acre plot as it says it is setting up a brand new IT campus at the Bantala IT SEZ. We have no information at this stage whether the campus will also include the offices of Mahindra Satyam,” said a senior official in the state IT department.