Ramalinga Raju’s multi-billion dollar Satyam fraud is not just giving sleepless nights to authorities in India and the US. It is now kicking up a storm Down Under as well, where the latest episode of the Satyam saga is unfolding in the Australian state of Victoria.

Raju had, last year, promised to invest Australian $75 million in setting up a IT hub at Deakin University’s Waurn Pond campus on the outskirts of Geelong, Victoria state’s second largest city located 75 kms from Melbourne. A move the Victorian government had hoped would transform Geelong from a decelerating car manufacturing hub into a Silicon Valley by creating 2000 jobs.

In exchange, Satyam was reportedly given 10 hectares of prime land at the Deakin University campus along with an undisclosed amount of money, reports in Australian newspapers like The Age and The Geelong Advertiser suggest. Now the Satyam fiasco is already spiralling into a political storm in the port city of Geelong with the ruling Victorian Labor government headed by Premier John Brumby coming under fire.

According to reports, Victoria’s opposition leader Ted Ballieu has already demanded a status report from the Brumby government that had inked the Satyam deal. “Victorians were told in April last year that the Satyam software development centre at Deakin University campus would create 2000 jobs. Yet we have not seen one job as a result of this project. We now discover that the former Satyam boss Ramalinga Raju is, far from being the champion of this project, in an Indian jail, a self-admitted fraudster involving over $1 billion.

The Premier must tell Victorians how much money was handed over and the status of the land,” Ballieu is quoted as having said.
Meanwhile Victorian MP and shadow treasurer Kim Wells has also reportedly slammed the deal saying: “The Satyam fiasco is a case study on the Brumby government grandiose announcements that come to nothing, secret deals that cost tax-payers untold sums of money and incompetent project management.”
Interestingly, the Deakin Satyam project was reportedly code-named project ‘Cricket’ by Brumby, who had termed it “as a great partnership, almost like Sachin Tendulkar and Steve Waugh coming together” in a statement to the Victorian Parliament.

“It is a fantastic outcome that will involve A$75 million of new investment in Geelong by Satyam, will create over the next eight years new jobs in Geelong with Satyam, and will lead to an increase of A$175 million in GDP in our state,” Brumby had earlier told the Parliament after the deal was announced during Raju’s visit to Geelong in April 2008.
The beleaguered Brumby government, already facing flak for rising job losses in Victoria, is now pursuing the matter with the Mahindras, the new owners of Satyam. Even as the fate of the project, like that of the Rajus, hangs in balance, an on-the-back-foot Brumby is recently quoted as saying: “We would still hope that the company continues with this investment. We’re still continuing to talk to them. They’ve asked for some time to look at all the arrangements that were proposed. So we hope we can still secure this investment but I think at this stage it is a little early to say.”