India, meet B. Ramalinga Raju, your own personal Bernard Madoff. The founder and chairman of Satyam Computer Services Ltd., one of India’s largest outsourcing IT firms, Raju has admitted to a staggering fraud that includes inflating the amount of cash on his company’s balance sheet by nearly $1 billion, overstating its profits for years and understating its liabilities. Raju admitted to the shocking scandal in a startlingly honest letter to his board and the Securities & Exchange Board of India. The scheme, he wrote, reached "simply unmanageable proportions," leaving him in a position "like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten." The sham, which sent Bombay’s stock exchanges down 7.3 percent, is already being called India’s Enron.
