Hyderabad, November 11: Yet another banker and witness in the Satyam Computers multi-crore fraud case told the XXI Additional Chief Metropolitan magistrate that HDFC bank documents purportedly submitted by the management of then Satyam Computers to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) and others were fake.
HDFC Zonal Head S Gopinath, the third witness in the case, deposed before the court that the signature in one of the bank receipts of a fixed deposit is fake. He said the date mentioned in the receipt was December 7, 2008 and bore the signature of one Deeraj Swaroop. “But Deeraj Swaroop resigned from our bank in 2005 and joined Standard Charted bank as managing director.
During that period the official authorised to sign on such documents was one Rahul Bhagat,’’ Gopinath said.
A similar depose was given by BNP Paribas branch manager Sebasian yesterday when he said that the letter head contained the e-mail Id of former CEO of BNP Paribas.
“The said CEO left our bank in 2002.
We also compared our bank records with the bank balance mentioned in the document and found a mismatch,’’ the witness said.
Gopinath also said that in some of the fixed deposit documents there was mismatch in the tenure mentioned, the starting date of the fixed deposit and the maturity date.
During cross examination, Gopinath was questioned by the defence counsel Umamaheshwar Rao whether all employees are communicated about the resignation of an employee.
The zonal manager said that news of resignation is not communicated to everyone.
He also added that data about any account’s transactions are there in the local branch server and data pertaining to transactions in the prior six months are available in the main server in Mumbai. He also said that nearly 48,000 employees of HDFC bank have access to the server, which has data about the account holders.
–Agencies