Hyderabad:
The arrest of Satyam's ex-chief Ramalinga Raju now seems imminent.
NDTV has learnt that with our national pride at stake after the Rs 7000 crore fraud that Raju has admitted to, it's now only a matter of time before he is arrested.
Raju's lawyer had said on Thursday that he is very much in Hyderabad and is going to co-operate with investigations.
Only in October 2008, Raju said that Satyam had a cash pile of Rs 4,000 crore and could leverage it to muster another Rs 15,000-20,000 crore to aggressively pursue acquisitions - his cherubic innocence hiding the mess his company was in.
The balance sheet as of September 30 carries ",inflated (non-existent) cash and bank balances of Rs 5,040 crore (as against Rs 5,361 crore reflected in the books),", the Harvard Business School alumnus told in a letter to employees.
While he is credited with designing simple, yet effective models to create value, these models did not always work for Raju, the reason why he went about designing an elaborate plan to make up for the lack of real assets with fictitious ones.
The former entrepreneur icon's plans started falling apart when he tried to acquire two companies promoted by his family for $1.6 billion. Investors' dissent forced him to go back on the deal and then there was no way forward or sideways -- so he called quits.