Former Satyam chief may have siphoned cash: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - B. Ramalinga Raju, the founder and former head of Satyam Computer Services may have skimmed huge amounts of cash from the company, rather than padded its books as he claims, according to a report in the New York Times that cited a person involved in the Satyam investigation.

Satyam, India's No. 4 software services exporter, has been battling for survival since Raju resigned as chairman earlier this month, revealing profits had been falsified for years and that $1 billion of cash on the books did not exist.

Investigators looking into the fraud have found a maze of about 300 companies related to Raju that were used to siphon as much as $1 billion in cash from Satyam, the report said, citing a senior official involved in the inquiry.

The article said the picture emerging from the investigation of Satyam is very different from the one painted by Raju in a letter to Satyam's board earlier this month.

In the letter, Raju said about $1 billion of Satyam's cash was "non-existent" and that he had falsified its profits for years to avoid losing control of the company.

Raju said neither he nor his brother, B. Rama Raju, who co-founded Satyam, "took even one rupee/dollar from the company."

The New York Times report, citing the person involved with the investigation, said the entire $1 billion Raju said was faked might have actually been earned by the company but then skimmed from it.

A spokesman for Satyam declined to comment on the report.

The report said Raju's lawyer did not return calls seeking comment.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha, editing by Maureen Bavdek)