But the Bank has held its ground leaving Satyam refusing to deny the Bank’s assertions or providing details under the pretext it doesn’t normally discuss specific clients.
Meanwhile, even before it was awarded the 2008 Golden Peacock, in mid-May, news of a legal battle with British telecom services provider Upaid Systems, became known.
The Upaid case, which had actually started in April 2007, involves allegations by the British company against Satyam of fraud, forgery, misrepresentation of facts and breach of contract.
It stems from a dispute involving transfer of intellectual property rights arising from a joint project that the companies worked on in the late 1990s.
Satyam, which was a technology vendor for Upaid at that time, has denied the allegations made by Upaid but a court in Texas has allowed Upaid to proceed with the suit. A hearing is scheduled in that court for 7 January.
The Golden Peacock Awards Secretariat says its selection process involves a “through” scrutiny of information available about the company, based on publicly available information.
However, the “assessors did not come across a single adverse or uncharitable report of the company,” Raut claimed.
Other winners of Golden Peacock award for excellence in corporate governance for the year 2008 include Swiss pharma company Novartis International AG, Reliance Industries Ltd and Oil and Natural Gas Corp.
As part of the award application process, there is a process fee of Rs24,500 for those applying to the national award category and a fee of £450 (Rs32,040) for those applying to the global award category. The award that Satyam won in 2008 was in the global category, while its 2002 award was in the national category.
Satyam appears to have won at least three other Golden Peacocks in categories such as “innovation” and “training”.