In what could bring out some interesting angles in India?s biggest corporate scam, the Andhra Pradesh government wants the help of top IT companies in India to deconstruct the Satyam accounting fraud.
That?s because the state Crime Investigation Department (CID) is staggered at the enormity of data volume mined from the company. The total data obtained by investigators so far is about 300 tera bytes (TB). For starters, 2 TB holds the content of one standard-sized university library.
Cyber experts are, therefore, trying to work out just how much time it would take to unearth the data on the Rs 7,800-crore fraud.
To get assistance for decoding certain sections of the data, the police are planning to approach government-owned and quasi-government IT experts. This includes, forensic experts from Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, IIT, National Informatics Centre, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. But this may not be enough. The state government is, therefore, thinking of roping in big IT companies too. ?Apart from other government institutions, we are even thinking of taking expertise from the private players as well. However, we are also cautious about this idea as it has to be done under watchful eyes,?? highly placed government officials said.
?Though the government is equipped to handle the task, expertise and newer technologies are much better and advanced with private players to decipher the data,?? sources said. ?There could be a possibility to make this idea into reality but it has to be done without any vested interest,?? forensic experts said.
Sources close to the development, on condition of anonymity, said though the data will be about a rival company for the IT bellweathers, owing to time constraints the state government is planning to depute an official to the companies to discuss the implications and also understand nature of the coding contained in the electronic data.
Incidentally, the state government now wants to come clean and has put pressure on CID to prepare a charge sheet as soon as possible as that would bring a sense of direction to the whole episode. However, whether this would translate into a business opportunity for IT companies, at a time of economic downturn, is something that no one wants to take a call on. ?There is a big opportunity there,?? quipped an IT expert.
The 300-odd tera byte of data contain details like the 171-odd land transaction details done by Ramalinga Raju and his well-knit team. “It?s difficult to calculate the time for processing the 300 TB of data and it depends on the method or technology used to read the data, but it is time consuming process,?? experts point out.
The CID has already given the accounts details fudged by Satyam to Sharath Associates. ?There could be a possibility to rope in a private player here too. But that is still at the stage of drawing board,?? an official said.