IANS

Kolkata, Sep 6: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has approved setting up a fast track court to settle the multi-crore accounting fraud in Satyam Computers, Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said here Saturday.

"The Andhra Pradesh High Court has agreed to our appeal and has already given an in-principal approval to set up a fast track court for the settlement of the Satyam fraud issue. We're now awaiting the final notification," Khurshid told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Talking about the status of the Satyam case, the minister said the government was putting in place an "early warning system" to prevent similar frauds in future.

"Presently we detect such frauds on the basis of anonymous complaints. The process has not been institutionalised so far. But this advanced model would help us to detect any Satyam-like incident before it happens," he said, adding that Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is helping the ministry to formulate the system.

The minister said investigation into the Satyam case had almost been completed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

"The CBI probe is almost over and now we are waiting for the report from US' Internal Revenue Services (IRS)," he said, after inaugurating an international conference on convergence of corporate governance norms, jointly organised by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur and the National Foundation of Corporate Governance (NFCG).

NFCG is a not-for-profit trust under the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA).

Satyam's founder-head Ramalinga Raju stunned corporate India Jan 7 this year by admitting the multi-crore accounting fraud. The accused face charges of cheating, criminal conspiracy, falsification of records and forgery.

The scam-hit company was later taken over by Tech Mahindra, the IT arm of the Mahindra group.