Indian police [a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a5sa8Cqwaa_Q&refer=home"]arrested two employees from the affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers[/a] 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 [a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/business/10nocera.html?8dpc"]fabricated $1 billion of assets[/a] and confessed to [a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/22/business/outsource.1-413494.php"]making up more than 10,000 employees[/a] to siphon money from the software company. State Farm Insurance has [a href="http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/006200901221012.htm"]severed its ties with Satyam[/a], citing uncertainty about the company's future as 'the only factor responsible for the termination of the contract,' which will reportedly [a href="http://www.livemint.com/2009/01/18232413/USbased-State-Farm-Insurance.html?h=B"]affect at least 400 on-site Satyam employees[/a].
Other customers, [a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126343"]including GE[/a], are standing by Satyam, one of the top recipients of [a href="http://www.businessweek.com/table/0518_h1btable.htm"]H-1B[/a] and [a href="http://images.businessweek.com/story/07/popup/0627_visatab.htm"]L[/a] visas (so much for those [a href="http://www.murthy.com/news/n_cbpiss.html"]$500 Fraud Prevention and Detection fees[/a]!)
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]Let's see, companies ship thousands of jobs to places that don't have the reporting and oversight capabilities we have here (or at least used to have) and are outside the jurisdiction of US courts in order to save a few bucks at the expense of several thousand local employees. They deal with the language barrier, the cost of travel, a culture where bribery can be a way of life, and time zone issues. Then said companies get taken to the cleaners because they can't audit their operations on that side of the world properly. [/p]Hmmmm, let me be the first to say HA-HA! I guess we need new batteries in the Sympathy Meter because it's showing a big, fat ZERO right now.[/p][\............................]
Sympathy Meter
The irony is that "Satyam" is truth in Sanskrit - or even more, something like "ultimate truth"...
etches
