Satyam Computer Services Ltd, software services firm will be called off the Golden Peacock Award it won last year for corporate governance, after chairman B. Ramalinga Raju confessed to accounting fraud on Wednesday.
Satyam’s corporate governance standards have been under inspection since a botched 16 December attempt to buy two firms belonging to Raju’s sons for a total of $1.6 billion.
“In (the) wake of unfolding events…we have decided to take away the award from Satyam,” said Manoj K. Raut, director general of the India office in the Golden Peacock Award Secretariat.
The UK-based World Council for Corporate Governance had presented the 2008 Golden Peacock Global Award for excellence in corporate governance to Satyam in September. Satyam had also won the award in 2002.
Accounting and audit firm Ernst and Young, who had awarded Raju with the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007, was silent. “The award is given by an independent jury and we are not in a position to comment,” a spokesperson said.