3. The Auditors Role and Factors Contributing to Fraud
Global auditing firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), audited Satyam’s books from June 2000 until the discovery of the fraud in 2009. Several commentators criticized PwC harshly for failing to detect the fraud. Indeed, PwC signed Satyam’s financial statements and was responsible for the numbers under the Indian law. One particularly
troubling item concerned the $1.04 billion that Satyam claimed to have on its balance sheet in “non-interest-bearing” deposits. According to accounting professionals, “any reasonable company would have either invested the money into an interest-bearing account, or returned the excess cash to the shareholders. The large amount of cash
thus should have been a ‘red-flag’ for the auditors that further verification and testing was necessary. Furthermore, it appears that the auditors did not independently
verify with the banks in which Satyam claimed to have deposits”.