Ten days ago, the title of my blog read, “Satyam’s Raju must go.” Yes, he’s gone but left a lot of bewildering facts for us to digest.

First, his confession, in a note to the company’s board. One analyst, Shankar Sharma of First Global, called it a “suicide note,” a reference to the devil-may-care attitude of dying men reflected in the letter. Apparently, the note is enough for his arrest, and indeed a class action lawsuit has already been filed in the US, where the wheels of justice move a lot quicker than in India.

My curiosity is this: What motivated him to do it?

All white collar crimes involve accounting but Raju is not the conventional crook. Conventional crooks don’t leave fairly detailed confession notes. Also, most do it for the money and invariably involves insider trading.

Now, I am not saying this may not exist in the case of Raju or his family. But in the confession, Raju says he and his immediate family have not sold Satyam stock, except for small numbers to meet philanthropic pledges. Now, I surely am not prepared to believe he has come clean with everything. I would imagine he has left out many details including the amount of profits that have been inflated over the years. But, I am going to assume he is telling the truth when he says his family has not sold Satyam stock in the last several years, mainly because this is easily verifiable.

Which begs the question: Why did Ramalinga Raju cook up the books? Remember, the problems with cash flow are recent whereas Raju says Satyam’s profits have been inflated for years. Clearly, this fraud began a long time ago, maybe with smaller amounts, and maybe without a specific trigger. What could have motivated an iconic billionaire to do something like that?

I am going to guess it is because of ego, not greed. He wanted himself to be the equal in stature of somebody like N R Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji, and Satyam to be the equal of the Big Three – TCS, Infosys and Wipro. This was hardly an easy task. Besides technological excellence, there was a measure of individual brand building involved and Raju never won that race. Investors always valued the Big Three a notch higher than Satyam and the others. This rankled him so much he determined to make the leap, by hook or crook.

That, presumably, led Raju down the path of destruction. One Telugu daily, Sakshi, says the fudging of numbers began nine years ago, mainly to meet the numbers in one quarter. He hoped to make amends but the numbers kept growing worse. But instead of withdrawing, he kept raising the bets, eventually putting his all.

It is quite possible Raju, in 2006, sold the 32% stake in Satyam Infoway, the company’s failed Internet division, to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur only to tide over a financial crisis. Of course, even that $100 million may have been insufficient to make amends. Now, not only has he lost it all, he also has lost the company he founded 20 years ago.