Satyam and types of scams

There are essentially two kinds of scams

• First where money is siphoned off by paying higher to related parties as suppliers

• Second where profits are added to show higher performance - typically if pay is related to profits / share prices.

The interesting part of Satyam (assuming Mr Raju's statement to be true) is that it went from second type to first type scam. I think thats where it became unmanagable. I would like to believe it is an isolated case but I would not bet my money on this. Ajay Shah has interesting piece on three zones of corporate governance. Type 1 scam affects Zone I and Zone II in big way with large number of cases, less money involved, not easy to recognize for outsiders. Irony is that powerless individual investors are involved hence not much is impacted.

We are surely going to see more uncovering of scams in coming months.