In January 2009, B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman and CEO of Satyam Computer Services, an Indian company, stunned India and the company’s shareholders when he admitted in a letter to the board of Satyam that he had falsified the company’s financial records in a $1 billion fraud. In the letter, Raju resigned and agreed to “subject myself to the laws of the land,” adding that the fraud had begun as an effort to hide one bad quarter but then had gotten out of hand. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing when to get off without being eaten,” Raju wrote.
