Pricewaterhouse Says Satyam Audits Unreliable

Pricewaterhouse Says Its Satyam Audits Relied On Company Information, Could Be Wrong

(AP)  PricewaterhouseCoopers, auditors of the troubled outsourcing giant Satyam Computer Services Ltd, said Wednesday that its audit reports for the last eight years relied on potentially false data provided by the company and should be disregarded.

"Our audit reports and opinions in relation to the financial statements for the Audit Period should no longer be relied upon," Pricewaterhouse wrote in a letter to Satyam's new board of directors, which was filed with stock exchanges in India and New York, as well as government and regulatory authorities in India.

On Jan. 7, Satyam founder and former chairman B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to doctoring the company's books for years.

Satyam's balance sheets were riddled with "fictitious" assets and "nonexistent" cash and contained a $1 billion gap that could no longer be concealed after a deal intended to save the struggling company was abandoned, Raju said in a letter to the company's board.

Pricewaterhouse said Wednesday that it had relied on information from Satyam's management and as a result its assessments of the company "may be rendered inaccurate and unreliable."

Raju and his brother B. Rama Raju, who served as Satyam's chief executive, as well as Satyam's former chief financial officer, Srinivas Vadlamani, have all been arrested on charges including cheating and forgery.

On Tuesday, senior police official V.S. Kumudi said that the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, where Satyam is headquartered, were being searched.

Pricewaterhouse said there was no "raid" at its office and that it was cooperating fully with investigators.