B Ramalinga Raju. (AP file photo)

Hyderabad, Jan. 7(UNI): Ahead of crucial January 10 Board meeting, Mr B Ramalinga Raju, founder of the USD 2 billion Satyam Computer Services Limited (Satyam) today resigned as the Chairman of India's fourth largest Software Exporting Company.

Submitting his resignation, Mr Raju said, "I am now prepared to subject myself to the laws of the land and face consequences thereof.

Tendering his apology to all Satyam employees and stakeholders, he expressed confidence that they would stand by the company in this hour of crisis.

He suggested making Mr Mynampatti as Chairman of the Task Force, which had been constituted in the wake of the aborted Maytas acquisition attempt, to immediately address the operational matters.

"I have promoted and have been associated with Satyam for well over 20 years now. I have seen it grow from few people to 53,000 people, with 185 Fortune 500 companies as customers and operations in 66 countries," he said.

Mr Raju revealed an overstated debtors position of Rs 490 crore as against Rs 2,651 reflected in the books of accounts.

For the September quarter (Q2), the company had reported a revenue of Rs 2,700 crore and an operating margin of Rs 649 crore (24 per cent of revenues) as against the actual revenue of Rs 2,112 crore and an actual operating margin of Rs 61 crore (three per cent of revenues).

This had resulted in artificial cash and bank balances going up by Rs 588 crore in Q2 alone.

He admitted that the gap in the Balance Sheet had arisen purely on account of inflated profits over several years (limited only to Satyam standalone, books of subsidiaries reflecting true performance).

What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. "It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew significantly (annualised revenue run rate of Rs 11,276 crore in the September quarter, 2008 and official reserves of Rs 8,392 crore)," he said.