1. Charles Ponzi was one of the biggest swindlers in US history, and gave his name to the Ponzi "pyramid" scheme allegedly used by Bernard Madoff on Wall Street. Orchestrated after the First World War, Ponzi's fraud centred on "international postal reply coupons", designed to allow mail to be sent internationally. By acquiring these coupons abroad and exchanging them for higher value postage stamps in the US (essentially a form of arbitrage), Ponzi was able to make around a 400 per cent profit. Though this was not illegal, Ponzi advertised for investors to his scheme, promising them fantastic returns. He paid handsome windfalls to a handful of investors, which brought people flocking to his newly-formed Securities Exchange Company [SEC]. People mortgaged their homes and poured their savings into the company, which was accumulating colossal liabilities. Existing investors were paid off with the money of new investors. At the peak of his fraudulent scheme in 1920, Ponzi was making around $250,000 per day, an enormous sum for the time. The authorities slowly came to realise that, in order to cover all the investments made in the SEC, there would have to be 160,000,000 postal coupons in circulation. There were in reality only 27,000. Ponzi was indicted on 86 counts of mail fraud and sentenced to five years in prison in 1920.

2. Kenneth Lay was the founder of Enron, whose spectacular implosion in 2001 lead to one of the biggest fraud cases in history. Lay was convicted of fraud for duping investors over the health of Enron's finances before it plummeted into bankruptcy. Prosecutors accused lay of pocketing over £40 million of investors' money, and Lay was charged with 11 counts of securities fraud. Enron was worth $66 billion at its peak, and collapsed with billions of dollars of investors' money. Lay died before he could be sentenced in 2006.

3. Barings, the oldest merchant bank in London founded in 1762, collapsed in 1995 after the original "rogue trader", Nick Leeson, lost £827 million in speculative trading, mainly on the futures markets. Leeson was head derivatives trader in Singapore for the bank and was supposed to be arbitraging - profiting from the differences between markets by simultaneously buying on one and selling on another. Instead, it emerged, he had been betting on the future direction of the Japanese markets, and his unhedged losses snowballed as he tried to cover his bad gambles. He was sentenced to six and a half years in a Singapore prison, and is currently CEO of Irish football club Galway United.

4. Alves dos Reis perpetrated one of the biggest frauds in history in the 1920s by forging documents to print around 100 million Portuguese escudos (around $150 trillion in today's money) in official bank notes. While in jail for forging cheques, Alves dos Reis hatched a plot to convince a London-based printing company to make 200,000 500 escudo notes (around 1 per cent of Portugal's GDP at the time) for use in Portuguese colonies such as Angola. He then laundered the money and profited from 25 per cent of the proceeds. Rumours of fake banknotes were circulating, but, as the notes were not technically fake, the scheme flourished until journalists realised that Reis's newly-formed bank was offering low-interest loans without receiving deposits. He was jailed for 20 years in 1930.

5. Jerôme Kerviel nearly brought Société Générale to its knees with fraud worth £3.7 billion in early 2008. "Le rogue trader" made €50 billion of unauthorised trades and futures positions, but argued that SocGén knew what he was doing and turned a blind eye, a claim strenuously denied by the bank, who are pursuing Kerviel on charges of breach of trust, falsifying documents and computer abuse.

6. Bernard Ebbers, director of WorldCom, exaggerated the assets of his media company to the tune of $11 billion. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2006 for falsely reporting the finances of WorldCom and cooking the books to cover the true nature of WorldCom's costs and losses. It was, in 2002, the largest ever Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, only overtaken by the collapse of Lehman Brothers earlier this year. Ebbers cannot expect to be released from prison before 2028.

7. Ramón Báez Figueroa was arrested in 2003 for massive banking fraud in the Dominican Republic. He laundered money and concealed information from the Dominican government as part of a fraud scheme worth $2.2 billion, two-thirds of the national budget of the Dominican economy. The resulting bank bailout pushed inflation in the country to 30 per cent, and the devaluing of the peso triggered the failure of two other national banks. Báez Figueroa, who was famous for his allegedly shady relationships with high-ranking politicians and journalists, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

8. Graham Halksworth would have been the world's biggest ever fraudster...if he had not been caught. The former Scotland Yard scientist tried to authenticate $2.5 trillion of US Treasury bonds that he claimed had been secretly issued by the US government in the thirties to undermine the Communist revolution in China. He was jailed for six years in 2003.

9. Sheridan Cox, the son of a British Army officer, allegedly defrauded investors around the world out of £520 million in an infamous "boiler room" scheme. He is still wanted for buying up dormant "shell" companies quoted on obscure stock markets and selling their shares through front companies to over 5,000 investors in Britain, Australasia and South Africa. He was convicted in absentia of a £30 million fraud in a Belgian court, and is wanted by the Taiwanese authorities for fraud worth over half a billion pounds.

10. Conrad Black, the disgraced media magnate, was convicted of nearly £30 million of fraud concerning newspaper firm Hollinger International, which used to own the Daily Telegraph. The peer was jailed for six and a half years for taking money owed to investors in the form of "non-compete" payments from the sale of newspaper titles. He last month made a plea to outgoing US President George Bush to commute his sentence, but can reasonably expect it to be refused.

Byrraju Ramalinga Raju (born September 16, 1954) is the former Chairman of Satyam Computers. Satyam was established by Ramalinga Raju and is amongst the top Indian IT vendors with over one billion dollars in revenue. On January 7, 2009, Raju resigned from the Satyam board after admitting to corporate fraud.

Early life

Raju was born to Byrraju Satyanarayana Raju in Bhimavaram. He did his B.Com from Andhra Loyola College at Vijayawada prior to receiving an MBA degree from Ohio University. He has attended the Owner/President course at Harvard. For his achievements and contribution to society, he has been awarded Doctorate by Anna University Chennai on 14 Dec 2007. He has two brothers and a sister. Raju is married to Nandini. They have two sons, Teja Raju and Rama Raju, and a daughter, Deepti, who is married.

Career

Raju founded Satyam in 1987 after venturing earlier into other businesses such as construction and textiles. He learned a great deal during his time at OU^{[clarification needed]} and in the United States. During that time he foresaw the upcoming trend of outsourcing and the future prominence of computers. He started an IT company with 20 employees and bagged a multitude of IT projects from US companies. Satyam rapidly developed and became a multinational company with thousands of employees spread over many countries. Raju showed a strong social orientation and has been furthering the cause of social transformation through Byrraju Foundation and EMRIEMRI.

Fraud

Raju was involved in a controversy involving the company Maytas and margin selling of his shares. It eventually ended in Raju admitting to an accounting fraud to the tune of 7000 crore Rupees or 950 million pounds, and subsequently resigning from the Satyam board. The Indian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers was the auditor of Satyam.

Ramalinga Raju, also known as Raju, is Satyam’s founder and chairman. Raju is a world-renowned visionary, global business leader, and thinker. He uses a simple, yet extensive management model to create value, which promotes entrepreneurship, a focus on the customer, and the constant pursuit of excellence. Raju is passionate about developing leaders within his organizations and has conceptualized / institutionalized the Full Life Cycle Leadership (FLCL) model—a unique entrepreneurship framework that develops leaders at all levels of Satyam.

Raju has an MBA from Ohio University, and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School. He has won numerous awards not only for building a best-in-class business but also taking innovative steps to positively impact the society. Some of the awards won by Raju include: the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2007), CNBC’s Asian Business Leader—Corporate Citizen of the Year (2002), Dataquest IT Man of the Year (2000), and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Services (1999).

Raju’s keen understanding of IT and institution building has enabled him to contribute to policy formulation in India and abroad. He was the ex-chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), a 1,100-member industry body of Indian IT services companies. He is:

Raju also serves on the boards of several educational, research, and not-for-profit institutions. Moreover, he tirelessly creates greater social equity and provides opportunities to underprivileged through institutions he has established: the Satyam Foundation, the Byrraju Foundation, and EMRI.

A voracious reader, Raju is deeply influenced by science. He has adopted several scientific principles in running business operations.

B. Rama Raju
Rama Raju, also known as Ramu, is Satyam’s co-founder and managing director. He has been on the company’s board since its inception in 1987. Ramu was appointed as the managing director in 1991 and the CEO in April 2005. He is also the chairman of Satyam-Venture Engineering Services, a subsidiary of Satyam, and is on the board of Nipuna Services, Satyam’s BPO subsidiary.

Ramu has a master's in economics from Madras Loyola College and an MBA, with a specialization in international trade, from Texas A&M International University (formerly Laredo State University). He also has attended the owner/president course at Harvard.

Ramu shares Raju’s social vision, particularly the importance of rural transformation through self-help groups and the use of technology. He is actively involved in the Byrraju Foundation, which was established to provide opportunities for the rural underprivileged.

Ram Mynampati
Ram Mynampati joined Satyam as executive vice president in 1999 and became executive vice president and chief operating officer in November 2000. He has been president, Satyam’s commercial and healthcare businesses since October 2002. Ram has executive responsibility for Satyam’s operations across the verticals of Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail & Transportation and Government. In addition, he oversees Satyam’s long standing strategic relationships with GE, its largest client and Microsoft.

Ram is directing Satyam’s rapidly growing footprint in Canada as well as its emerging presence across Latin America. Ram holds a master of computer science from California State University. He is the chairman of the Board of Citisoft Plc., a business and systems consulting firm acquired by Satyam in April 2005, specializing in the investment management space; and Satyam Technologies, Inc., a 100% subsidiary of the Company. Ram is also director on the Board of Satyam Venture Engineering Services Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture between the Company and Venture Global Engineering LLC, USA.

T. R. Prasad
T. R. Prasad holds a master’s degree in Physics (Electronics) from Banaras Hindu University. He is a lifetime fellow of the Institute of Engineers (FIE). He took over as Cabinet Secretary, Government of India, on 01.11.2000 and held this post for a two-year tenure after which he joined the 12th Finance Commission as a member. The other positions held by T.R. Prasad prior to this were: Defence Secretary, Government of India; Secretary, Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Industry; Chairman, Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB); Secretary, Heavy Industry, and Chairman, Maruti Udyog Limited.

Prasad’s earlier assignments include: Principal Secretary, Industry and Commerce/Urban Development/Revenue, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Chairman, Vizag Port Trust; Special Officer, Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad; Managing Director of Andhra Pradesh State Finance Corporation/Andhra Pradesh State Civil Supplies Corporation; Development Commissioner and Ex-Officio Secretary to Chief Minister; Secretary, Irrigation and Command Area Development; Secretary, Planning, Government of Andhra Pradesh. He was a Director on the Board of IDBI, ICICI, EXIM Bank, Vizag Steel Plant, Hindustan Shipyard, Nagarjuna Chemicals & Fertilizers and Dredging Corporation of India.

Prof. V. S. Raju
Prof. V. S. Raju is an engineer with bachelor and master degrees from Andhra University and Indian Institute of Science, respectively. He also holds a Dr. Ing. from University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He is the former Director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; and was a professor and Dean at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. During his over 40-year academic career, he interacted extensively with industry as a consultant and at policy level, promoted Industry-Academia collaboration. He was a part time member of telecom regulatory Authority of India for three years and has extensive exposure to issues related to telecommunications. Currently, he is the chairman of the Naval Research Board, Defense Research and Development Organization, Government of India. He is also a member on various other committees and task forces, concerned with technical education and research.

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