As the Satyam saga unfolds in the days to come, the critical aspects of corporate India's frauds will hopefully be out in the open. For now, several questions remain unanswered.

First, what compelled Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju to fudge the company book in the first place? Raju founded the company in 1987, and since then has steered it to become India’s fourth largest IT firm with a star-studded clientele that includes world’s largest steel maker Arcelor Mittal and Japanese car maker Nissan Motor among others.

In his latter written to the company board, Raju admits that the fraud started several years ago but offers no explanation as to why it began? Raju goes on to add further that neither he nor any member of the promoter group made any gains from the wrong doing.

So, there can be only two plausible explanations. One, he did this in the company's heydays to enhance stock value and use it to leverage funds to run and expand Satyam Computer.

Two, Raju is not saying the complete truth... there could be further wrong doing including insider trading.

WHY DIDN'T HE GO THE WHOLE HOG?

The second question is why did Raju not go the whole hog for the cover up? It's pretty clear now that the Maytas acquisition was a cover-up and the logic has turned out to be rather simple. Satyam’s books had over Rs 5,000 crore of non-existent cash, which he needed to dispose off to set records straight. So, he announced plans to buy two real estate firms Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties run by his sons. Both companies were collectively valued to match Satyam’s inflated cash reserves. Had the transaction gone ahead, excess cash would have been replaced by real assets.

Clearly, the acquisition did raise a lot of hue and cry but, technically, it could not have stopped Raju from going ahead with the acquisitions.... but he didn’t. Why? Was the widespread criticism and decline in stock and ADR prices post the botched acquisition announcement that stopped him? But wasn't Raju already in bigger trouble already?

WHY DID HE CONFESS?

Was it fear of a hostile takeover or fear of investigations into its books that made Raju finally confess? One theory is that Raju feared that in the event of take over, the truth would have come out in the open. A take over would have entailed due diligence and truth about non-existent cash reserves would have come out... but that's only a theory. In the past few days, Satyam’s investors like Aberdeen had endorsed Raju as best suited to lead the company in the medium-term. So, clearly, Raju was not out of lifelines, and could have continued for a while till he found a way to clean his books or someone discovered his con act. So, why did Raju choose to turn himself in now?