Satyam scam: SAT refuses to lift Sebi’s two-year ban on Price Waterhouse

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) on Friday said that Price Waterhouse could continue to service existing clients whose financial year started on January 1, 2018, but it refused to grant a stay on a two-year audit ban ordered by the market regulator.

The markets regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), had last week barred Price Waterhouse from auditing listed companies in the country for two years, after a probe into the nearly decade-old accounting fraud case at software services company, B Ramalinga Raju-led Satyam Computer, that became India’s biggest corporate scandal.

It had however allowed Price Waterhouse to continue auditing books for the current fiscal year ending in March.

Most Indian companies follow an April-March financial year.

Price Waterhouse had appealed to SAT to lift the Sebi ban, but the Tribunal only agreed to give it a reprieve to permit it to complete audits it had already taken on for the 2018 calendar year.