Great frauds in history: Byrraju Ramalinga Raju and Satyam

Byrraju Ramalinga Raju boosted the share price of his company by inflating profits, cash flows and assets, creating false bank statements, customer invoices and even fake salary accounts.

B. Ramalinga Raju © NOAH SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images

(Image credit: B. Ramalinga Raju © NOAH SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images)

Byrraju Ramalinga Raju was born in Bhimavaramin southeast India and received a degree in commerce before going on to do an MBA at Ohio University. He then went back to India and started various industrial, real-estate and construction firms, with mixed results. In 1987 he set up Satyam Computer Services, one of India's first outsourcing firms, taking it public in 1992. By the start of 2009 Satyam was India's fourth-largest IT firm and was providing IT and accounting services for more than 600 large companies, including international conglomerates General Electric, Nestl, and BP.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri