Additionally, the Satyam fraud went on for a number of years and involved both the manipulation of balance sheets and income statements. Whenever Satyam needed more income to meet analyst estimates, it simply created “fictitious” sources and it did so numerous times, without the auditors ever discovering the fraud. Suspiciously, Satyam also paid PwC twice what other firms would charge for the audit, which raises questions about whether PwC was complicit in the fraud. Furthermore, PwC au- dited the company for nearly 9 years and did not uncover the fraud, whereas Merrill Lynch discovered the fraud as part of its due diligence in merely 10 days. Missing these “red-flags” implied either that the auditors were grossly inept or in collusion with the company in committing the fraud. PWC initially asserted that it performed all of the company’s audits in accordance with applicable auditing standards